Amazon has announced a hike in the subscription price of its video streaming platform, Amazon Prime, in India. This hike makes the membership of Amazon Prime more expensive than that of Netflix, with the monthly subscription price now at INR 299, up from INR 179 per month.
The quarterly plan has also been hiked to INR 599 from INR 459, while the annual plan remains unchanged at INR 1,499. The Amazon Prime Lite membership costs also remain unchanged at INR 999 per month.
Comparing the subscription prices of Amazon Prime and Netflix, Netflix offers various slabs starting from INR 149 per month, while Amazon Prime is now at par with Disney+Hotstar, another global competitor of both Amazon and Netflix, whose premium monthly subscription price is also INR 299.
However, Amazon Prime offers benefits beyond just video streaming, including free and faster delivery of products ordered on Amazon, access to Prime Music, early notifications of offers and sales on Amazon, and better offers.
India is a competitive market for video streaming platforms, with over 40% of its 140.76 crore population being internet users. Recently, Disney+Hotstar lost 3.8 million subscribers in the October-December quarter of 2022 after taking HBO content off the air due to losing IPL streaming rights. Meanwhile, Jio Cinema announced that free streaming of the league garnered 5 crore new downloads to the app in just a week’s time, clocking over 147 crore video views just on the first weekend while attracting 10 crore new viewers.
Amazon Prime launched its movie rental service in India a year ago, offering early rental access to the latest Indian and international movies and a catalogue of popular movies from around the world on a transactional (per-movie) basis. Amazon also announced its plan to increase investment in the country, revealing 40 titles of series and movies in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu, to be released in 24 months from then.
The market in India is content-driven, but competition is stiff. It remains to be seen how the price hike of even one platform affects the overall market.
