Netflix marks a decade in India with a Shah Rukh Khan-narrated film

Let’s go back a decade, to 2016. To the era when we used to wait for our favourite film to come on television to watch. Days turned into months. We still used to wait for that one film.

There was another horror story; if the film wasn't suitable for family viewing, options narrowed further, either skip it entirely or resort to pirated sites.

Then, a decade ago, a streaming platform entered the Indian market. It arrived quietly, but it brought something the country hadn't quite seen before: access to international content that rarely made it to Indian theatres, available at the press of a button. Its content library included the latest films and those that have long left the box office.

The streaming platform Netflix completed a decade with the Indian audience. To mark the decade, it has released a film narrated by Shah Rukh Khan. Khan narrates the journey of the platform through a decade in India, revisiting how Indians consumed shows, movies and documentaries. 

The platform became popular for Indians in 2018 with Sacred Games. The series presented India without softening its edges or translating its complexities for global audiences. Viewers responded because it felt unfiltered. The success indicated that people were ready for narratives that didn't need box office approval or censorship compromises.

What followed was a rapid succession of stories where the main protagonists were dealing with familiar pressures. Students anxious about competitive exams appeared in Kota Factory. College relationships played out in Mismatched without forced drama, or maybe some drama. The platform had understood that everyday lives could anchor compelling narratives.

Language barriers began to dissolve when foreign series arrived with Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu dubbing. Content that might have appealed only to urban, English-speaking viewers reached wider audiences.

Marketing strategies followed suit, with Indian creators on social media to localise campaigns. For releases like Squid Game, the platform worked with regional influencers to make international content feel locally relevant.

The catalogue expanded beyond series. Documentaries found audiences beyond film festival circuits, stand-up comedians found new platforms, and established filmmakers like Sanjay Leela Bhansali brought ambitious projects like Heeramandi to the platform.

Netflix currently has 12.37 million subscribers in India, according to demandsage. With this came the behavioural shift, where late-night binges became routine, waiting for Friday releases became optional, and viewing transformed from a solitary activity to a shared experience. People began hosting watch parties, turning binge-watching into gatherings.

The platform also had to reckon with economic realities. Early on, its subscription carried a certain premium status, priced beyond what many of us were willing to spend on entertainment. Over time, the platform adjusted its pricing to match what Indian audiences considered reasonable, recognising that accessibility mattered as much as content quality.

To further increase watch time and extend the hype surrounding some of the most-watched content, the platform started releasing shows in parts.

The anniversary film narrated by Shah Rukh Khan captures this through language itself: the shift from "Netflix pe kya dekha?" (what did you watch), to "Netflix pe kya dekhein?" (what should we watch). 

Over ten years, the platform learned to belong to the region and found ways to make global stories feel local while giving local stories global reach. What began as a foreign platform became something else, a space where Indian viewers didn't just consume content, but saw their own lives, languages, and complexities reflected back at them.