'WHEN YOU HAVE THE BEST CONTENT, YOU CAN GROW A LOT'

OVER THE PAST two decades, Founder and Co-CEO Reed Hastings has shaped Netflix from being a DVD rental service to a $270-billion market cap entertainment powerhouse, in the process of transforming how the world consumes video entertainment.

- Udayan Mukherjee

But while the pandemic came as a huge boost for its business, the terrain is turning trickier as consumers experience home viewing fatigue and rivals with deep pockets such as Disney, Amazon and HBO train their guns on this huge market. In India too, Netflix faces significant challenges from Amazon Prime and Disney+ Hotstar. Hastings talks to BT’s Global Business Editor Udayan Mukherjee about streaming, competition, movies, and the India journey, among other things. Edited excerpts:

UM: I want to start from the beginning, Reed. Could you tell viewers in India how the idea of Netflix, one so simple yet transformative, was born in your head?

RH: Yes, a long time ago I used to go and rent a VHS cassette. There was this great movie—Apollo 13, and I forgot all about it for a month and totted up this astronomical late fee of $40! And I felt so stupid. A year later, a friend told me about a DVD, this beautiful, sleek little thing. And I thought, oh my gosh, can you mail this thing to people? It turned out we could and, lo and behold, our business of Netflix began in 1999 as a DVD rental service. So that is our lucky late fee story that got us started!

UM: That’s an amazing way to start one of the most defining stories of our times. But the Netflix story got a massive boost from the pandemic as people stayed home and consumed your content. Now, as things normalize, there is an attention recession and viewer fatigue is creeping in. How badly could this slow you down?