Amazon Prime to release Comicstaan next month, plans 13 more original shows

Amazon India is all set to release its next big original video series on Prime Video, its flagship subscription streaming service and is going back to its roots of using comedy to win customer hearts with Comicstaan which debuts on July 13.

Comicstaan will have some of India’s leading standup comedians such as Tanmay Bhat, Kenny Sebastian, Naveen Richard, Kaneez Surkha, Kanan Gill and others, judging and mentoring other upcoming standup comedians in a reality TV style show.

The show will be Amazon’s third original series specifically for Indian audiences to be launched this year and the fourth since the launch of the platform. The US company says Comicstaan is only the mid-way point for its original series’ in the country and is already looking at many more titles for next year.

“Last year we launched one (Amazon Prime Original Series), this year we’ve launched three so far, and hope to launch three more. Next year we plan to have 10 shows,” said Vijay Subramanian, Director and Head of Content for Amazon Prime Video in India. “Typically these shows take about two and a half years to be put together because there’s a lot of time spent on the development.”

Amazon with its Rs 999 Prime subscription that offers free and expedited delivery to customers shopping on its platform online, has quickly been able to grow its video streaming service by offering it as a free benefit. It is estimated that Amazon had 5 million subscribers to its Prime services in India by the end of 2017 and a high percentage of them also subscribed to its video streaming service.

In comparison, Netflix, which is a rival to Amazon Prime Video, charges customers a minimum of Rs 450 a month and isn’t focusing massively on originals for the India market just yet. The popularity of Prime Video in India according to Subramanian is because of its strategy to produce local content quite early into the life of the product here.

“Locally relevant content is very important for us and the starting point for that was five Indian languages besides English. Within that we decided that the first place we’ll focus our originals on was in Hindi. Going forward and even within the regional languages we are experimenting as we do understand the importance to have a diverse range of originals,” added Subramanian.

While Amazon is working with big production houses such as Excel Entertainment, Abundantia Entertainment, Kabir Khan Productions, Raj and DK for current and future Prime Original titles, it is also working with regional producers. It launched its first Amazon Exclusive in Telugu, Gang Star, which began streaming earlier this month.

It is also working on an Exclusive in Tamil which it says it will use to gauge customer feedback and decide on the kind of originals it will produce in those languages. In 2019 it is looking at a moving beyond English and Hindi for some of the original content it produces.

Amazon had in early 2017 said that it would invest $300 million in developing original content for Prime Video in India over the next couple of years. While Subramaniam doesn’t give any indication of how much of that money has been utilised so far, he says that the company’s fast expanding range original shows for India is enough proof that the investment is coming in.

Going forward, shows which have been launched already will begin getting follow on seasons so the amount of original content will grow exponentially. While the company wants to invest a lot of money, experts say it's a small price to pay to lock customers into its ecosystem of shopping for products, consuming content and even managing more of their life through devices such as Echo.

“India is a very important market for us and within that the video opportunity is huge. To that extent we evaluate making the right choices and providing the right amount of resources behind those choices. We really follow the path of the customer and we’re really excited about the market and continue to stay invested in it,” said Subramaniam.