The tech giant also inked a series of content licensing deals with top Indian production houses and added a new TVOD video service to its India platform.
Amazon is doubling down on the India market in a major way.
At a glitzy showcase event held in Mumbai Thursday, the company unveiled an enormous slate of 40 new titles spanning original series, movies and co-productions. The slate includes Hindi, Tamil and Telugu projects, with the entire collection to be released in India over the next 24 months.
The announcement marked Amazon Prime Video’s five-year anniversary in the India market, and the company said it “will more than double” its investment in Indian content over the next half decade.
Amazon also has inked a series of content licensing deals with top Indian production houses including Ajay Devgn FFilms, Dharma Productions, Excel Entertainment and Yash Raj Films.
Indian actors Abhishek Bachchan and Sumukhi Suresh were on hand to host the event, which was attended by a slew of Amazon executives, including Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios; Kelly Day, vp of international for Prime Video; and James Farrell, head of local originals at Amazon Studios, as well as the local India team leaders Gaurav Gandhi, country head of Amazon Prime Video India; Aparna Purohit, head of India originals and Sushant Sreeram, director of India SVOD.
The new film and series projects span a wide array of genres, ranging from thrillers, action, dramas, comedies and romances to supernatural and horror titles for a YA audience, as well as biographies, true-crime and investigative docudramas.
In a parallel announcement, Amazon said it will boost its video offerings in India by adding the Prime Video Store, its transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) movie rental service, to its India platform.
“We have steadily innovated in the way we offer movies to our consumers, from offering films in a post-theatrical early-window to direct-to-service premieres bringing the most anticipated movies to consumers’ living rooms and preferred devices,” said Gaurav Gandhi, country head, Amazon Prime Video India. “We are deeply committed to grow this segment further and are going bigger on our film licensing partnerships, expanding our co-production initiatives and are now excited to announce our foray into original movies. In addition to our investments in great content, we are super excited about the launch of our TVOD movie rental service, that will not just give even more expanded reach to these films but also give customers more choice in how they want to access and watch content.”