Every Country Needs a Reliance Jio - Netflix CEO

"Reliance Jio has been a transformational network in India and has brought down data cost massively. There are other people around the world having that kind of impact and can get people to use Internet more. We hope someone would do a Reliance Jio in every other country," - These are the words spoken by Reed Hastings, the co-founder and CEO of Netflix during an interview.

He was speaking about the slow pace of digital transformation in several countries and one of the reasons which he believes is high costs for telecom accessories like mobiles, call rates, data rates and dongle rates. Especially in developing and underdeveloped countries, this is a real game changer. He was referring to the huge digital transformation that Jio has bought by offering cheap data for more people to access Internet.

Reliance Jio entered the market with literally free service for few months and later started charging relatively cheapest rates in the industry. With this strategy, it has been able to attract more than 160 million subscribers in a span of just 14 months. This is a record which is yet to be broken in the world.

Hastings also said that India is very relevant to the video-streaming company. "In India, content world has been held back and is only ad-supported television. And what's great about Netflix is no advertising," he said. Worth to note that Netflix has recently announced a couple of original Indian series, including Sacred Games, Ghoul, Leila and Crocodile. For Sacred Games, Netflix has roped in Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte.

Amazon Prime and Hot star are the major competitors for Netflix in India. The content provided by the other two sites is more local, while Netflix is primarily English. Netflix's pricing structure also is a factor - it offers its basic services at Rs 500 per month, while Amazon Prime charges Rs 999 a year.Hastings said the only strategy their company has to take a lead in video streaming market is creating and providing quality and superior content. This is the only way in the market to attract huge customer base. While Hastings's comment hints that Jio has boosted Netflix’s business in India, the company has to more work to give a tough competition to local competitors from being the market leader.