India Web Fest Season 6: Fireside Chat: Netflix Driving Content Narrative in Indian OTT

The recently held event, India Web Fest Season 6 managed to rake in an array of respected dignitaries coming in, and a part of the conclave was Ms. Monika Shergill, the Vice President of Content, at Netflix India.

Ms. Shergill engaged in an insightful fireside chat with the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of IWMBuzz, Mr. Siddhartha Laik where they talked about how Netflix is driving the content narrative in the Indian OTT space.

Siddhartha: Monika Ma’am, first of all, congratulations. It has been a phenomenal year for Netflix with one hit after another ranging from Scoop to Heeramandi, The Great Indian Kapil Show, Maharaj to Kota Factory and much more. Tell us about the philosophy of choosing content at Netflix.

Monika: With all the titles you mentioned and our latest release, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack coming out, it only speaks about the kind of different subjects that we look at. I think, fundamentally, when a creator comes to us, they have a vision of how they want to tell a story. As a service, we need to have a vision of the service that we want to create for the audiences; so when we think about content strategies, a few things are essential and some principles we keep in mind. First and foremost is, we want to be the most distinctive storytelling platform for the subjects that we choose.

It should not be that you can predict what the next thing is. This distinctive and unique finding stories is the most important job; it is the simplest and the hardest job. So that is important. After that comes the variety that we give. It’s very important for us that we are always catering to a range of audiences with different tastes and moods.

The third very important thing is consistency. Every once in a while, but the fact that anyone tuning in and signing up to be an entertainment professional, you have to keep surprising the audience constantly. At the end of the day, the audience is the one who decides, and they know what they want to watch. No matter what you tell them, they know what they want to watch. So you have to surprise and delight the audience. Those are the things that we keep in mind.

Siddhartha: So, you spoke about quality, variety, and ultimately, the power of the audience. So, I believe, sir, determining what is working, how many people are watching it, and which Indian stories are travelling globally. So when you decide on something, how important is data in deciding which content to green-light?

Monika: You know, storytelling is always about the gut. It can never start with data. Data can inform you about the potential size of an audience and the genres that work better. For instance, we know in India and actually, the world over, crime thrillers are a very important genre that works for people, and romance is under-served. So, rom-coms are an interesting but under-served space. Comedy is hard to write, and hard to land, but people love comedy in any format. Action is something that large audiences go for. Drama is a staple for everyone. But it’s really important to know that data can only help inform your budget choices, sometimes depending on the size of the audience. But data can never tell you which is the next story that will work. Anyone who thinks that data is driving is wrong. It’s the audience that is driving what needs to happen and what becomes successful or not. A lot of creators sometimes think that they are making for a global audience. There isn’t a global audience till the audience makes a story global. So the journey is always very local, very authentic, and very culture-specific. And then when it has those key universal themes, those values, those emotions that can resonate with people beyond a certain culture, you know, that’s when things start becoming global.

Siddhartha: A coup of sorts that you managed to do is get Sanjay Leela Bhansali to direct on the small screen. You managed to make the small screen go big. Tell us the experience or any anecdote of working with him, and how did the overall idea of something so big on OTT come about?

Monika: The experience of working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali on Heera Mandi has been as special as the project itself. Heera Mandi began with a conversation between Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who expressed a strong desire to create something grand for the platform.

The coup was to get SLB to do long format, and not a film – that was the exciting and tough part. He had this story which he was sitting on for several years and he knew that this couldn’t go in a film format, so having that journey to create that into a series was fun. The first couple of years were actually, working on several drafts to land a long-format story because he is very used to film format. He is a lover of series on Netflix and hence that became all the more interesting. We produced it very fast unlike many other shows that take longer in production. Once we had it on paper, we turned it around pretty quickly. It might be surprising to many as they think that he might be difficult and not collaborative but he is one of the most collaborative people because he cares to appeal to his audiences.

Watch out for the full conversation below-