India is a key geographic area for Amazon Prime Video: Mike Hopkins

The next 250 million subscribers that we're going to acquire are definitely going to come from outside of the United States, said Mike Hopkins, Head of Prime Video & Amazon MGM Studios. Hopkins was speaking to director-producer Karan Johar at the Prime Video press conference.

Hopkins said, "We are not going to be able to achieve that unless we do a really good job for customers in India as well."

Speaking on where India fits into the world of Prime Video, Hopkins said that India is a key geographic area for the global streaming platform. 

"We also believe in the story of India and the growth that's been happening here over the last several years. In fact, when I think about streaming television and I think of India, what's remarkable is that I've heard many people say this week that more people are streaming TV and film than they're watching it on linear television on satellite cable. And what's remarkable about that is that streaming has only really existed for seven or eight years."

Hopkins shared that Prime Video is also an innovation hub. "I can't wait to see all the innovations they're planning for our servers and our product because, obviously, the programming is super important and no one's going to open up an application just for the product and the tech that's behind it. But it sure makes it a lot better when the service is easy to use and responsive. And so, teams are working hard on that."

Hopkins also mentioned that the platform is making a lot of progress in India. "For the last several years outside of the US, more people have signed up for Prime in India than anywhere else in the world. That's pretty good growth."

"So, more people in the world are signing up for Prime in India outside of the US. And Prime Video is the number one reason they sign up in India. The third thing I'll say is that in the last year, India had the highest percentage of Prime members who streamed Prime Video than any other country in the world. So that's why people enjoy Prime Video and Indian teams doing a great job, and I couldn't be more thrilled to be here."

Speaking on the approach to build the global media business, Hopkins shared that Prime Video definitely has a unique business model here at Amazon. 

“We really start with Prime as our base. I've noticed over the last few years that as content has been moving to streaming, it's complicated. People aren't always sure exactly where to go to get that movie, that TV series, or even that sport, depending on where they are in the world. And so, one of the things we've spent a lot of time thinking about is how we can put all of that together in one place for customers. Now it's not easy. We haven't succeeded everywhere in the world yet in putting all of their streaming content into one application, but we are making a lot of progress."

He further explained, "We've approached streamers all over the world to join Prime Video; you can subscribe to them inside of our application. We've also built the world's largest TVOD store, so more people rent and buy movies on Prime Video than any other store in the world. And then, if you're not a subscriber or if you don't want to subscribe to something, We also offer an array of AVOD content where you can watch TV and films without a subscription. We do that for the brand Free V around the world, and here in India, we have Mini TV, which is available on Prime Video and on our retail site. Speaking of Mini TV, our business is doing really well, where we've grown four times in overall watch time since 2023."

According to Hopkins, in any given week in 2023, Indian content was watched in over 210 countries and territories worldwide on Prime Video. "So that's a lot of places watching Indian content. The second thing is that Indian programming trended in the top 10 on Prime Video worldwide for 43 out of the 52 weeks of 2023."

Speaking about the content priorities in the near future, Hopkins shared that today Prime Video has over 200 million Prime members around the world in 240 countries. 

"From an Indian perspective, we put together—over 70 shows and films coming over the next couple of years. From a global perspective, we couldn't be more excited to deliver some global tentpole programming this year. We've got the second season of The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, coming this year. We've got another season of The Boys coming. We're super excited about Citadel Honey Bunny, which is a local franchise. Citadel is our global multi country franchise, and we're doing another one in Italy as well. "

He added, "We also have a fast-growing young adult audience, and we're really focused on that audience because, you know, obviously you're in India as a young country. That's true in many countries around the world. So, we've seen success with things like the Summer I Turned Pretty international originals, like My Fault, out of Spain. content like adult animation content, like Invincible and Has Been Hotel. So those are some television series we're really excited about; on the film front, we have two movies that both actually just premiered at South by Southwest last couple of weeks. The first is The Idea of You with Anne Hathaway, and it's actually set a record for the number of streams on a trailer for a streaming film ever."

The Prime Video announced new show Mr. Beast. "We just announced an ambitious news show from Mr. Beast with 1,000 contestants vying for a $5 million prize. Mr. Beast is aiming to create the largest game show in the history of the world and we couldn't be more excited. Take that show out, show that format, and supersize it. And then, we have a really big show that we're super excited about premiering this year called Fallout. This is super special for us, it's based on one of the greatest video games of all time. And so Fallout is the story of the haves and have-nots of the world, in a world where there's really nothing much left to have. The series comes to us from Kilter Films, and executive producers Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of Westworld."