South Indian content on OTT

Suzhal: The Vortex, created by Pushkar and Gayatri of Vikram Vedha (2017) fame, is set in a small town in Tamil Nadu and is about a young girl who goes missing and the secrets that tumble out during the investigation. Amazon Prime Video left no stone unturned in promoting the crime thriller, launching it at the 22nd edition of the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards in Abu Dhabi. Starring Aishwarya Rajesh, Kathir and Sriya Reddy in the lead, Suzhal was released in over 30 Indian and international languages, including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Castilian Spanish, Latin Spanish, Arabic, and Turkish. 

A Prime Video India spokesperson said the streaming giant has over 100 projects in various stages of development and production in India, and that there are over 20 Tamil projects in development currently. According to the spokesperson, local is the new national, and viewers are watching content across linguistic barriers. In fact, 60% of Prime Video customers stream content in four or more languages, and 50% viewership of local language content comes from outside home states. “Prime Video content is seen gaining fans worldwide with 25% audience of Indian titles coming from outside India,” the spokesperson added. 

The numbers are good news for the south Indian industries that are jostling for space with Hindi and international titles on OTT platforms. The success of Zee5’s Ayali is even more encouraging since it doesn’t fall into the tried-and-tested genres that have worked well in Hindi. According to Manish Kalra, chief business officer of Zee5 India, the coming-of-age series created a record for content in regional languages with over 100 million streaming minutes.