Amazon Prime is one of the ‘Value for Money’ OTT subscriptions in India. The annual subscription of the platform costs 999 Rupees per year. It comes with a bundle offer of e-commerce services (free and speedy shipping), Streaming Services (Amazon Prime Video), and Amazon Music.
Amazon Prime subscription is much cheaper when compared to another OTT giant, Netflix which costs 2,388 Rupees only for the Mobile plan (1 screen/ SD content). Moreover, Amazon offers many Direct-to-OTT releases from Bollywood to Regional film industries which makes it Paisa Vasool.
But then, it looks like the costly Direct-to-OTT deals and other overheads seem to be taking a toll on the OTT major. The Platform has decided to hike its price by 50% very soon. The OTT giant is already asking its subscribers to buy the subscription at current prices since the price will be going up very soon.
The cost-conscious customers in Telugu markets are upset with this move. “Amazon is into mindless hedging of OTT rights of Post-theatrical and Direct-To-OTT releases. Despite knowing that the revenue model is not sustainable. Also, the creative team at the platform should be blamed for selecting poor content which never worked for Amazon. In the end, they are penalizing the subscribers,” they lament.
Besides the issues with Prime Video, the company is also burdened with deep discounts and free shipping it offers on its e-commerce platform. Having said that, Amazon is still value for money and is also a viable option when compared to Netflix. The move upsets the customers because of the expectations it already set on the pricing front.
