Yahoo Lifestyle Amazon MX Player Makes Major India Play With 100-Show Slate, Pushes Free Streaming
In a power move that signals its serious play for India’s streaming wars, Amazon MX Player showcased its ambitious strategy at its inaugural StreamNext event, rolling out plans for over 100 new shows in 2025, including 40 Hindi-language originals.
The Mumbai-based event, which drew heavyweight industry figures like Martin Sorrell and Benedict Evans, turned heads with its star-studded lineup featuring Bobby Deol (“Aashram 3”), veteran action stars Suniel Shetty and Jackie Shroff (“Hunter 2”), and reality TV personalities Remo D’Souza and Malaika Arora (“Hip Hop India 2”).
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The streamer, which claims a massive reach of over 250 million monthly users, is doubling down on its free, ad-supported model. “There is no other streaming service in India that offers such a massive selection of content for free,” said Karan Bedi, who heads Amazon MX Player. The platform has racked up 1.4 billion downloads on Play Store, positioning itself as a major challenger to traditional TV networks.
Amazon Ads India chief Girish Prabhu emphasized the platform’s unique proposition: “Today’s gathering is all about bringing together the vast reach of Amazon MX Player, with ad tech that leverages Amazon’s trillions of customer signals.” The service is banking on its integration across Amazon’s ecosystem, including Amazon.in, Prime Video, and Fire TV.
Content head Amogh Dusad unveiled a slate that includes fresh seasons of hit shows like “Aashram,” “Hunter,” and “Hip Hop India,” alongside new offerings like “Bhay,” centered on an Indian paranormal investigator, and “The Titan Story,” a chronicle of India’s first super brand. The platform is also betting big on international content, promising a new “MX Vdesi” series weekly, featuring Mandarin and Turkish-language shows dubbed in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.
On the advertising front, the streamer is rolling out new interactive and shoppable ad formats, which according to execs, drive 6-7 times higher viewer interaction compared to industry standards. “Our audiences are highly engaged viewers and we have a strong understanding of their shopping patterns, an advantage that only Amazon MX Player can provide,” said Aruna Daryanani, director at Amazon MX Player.
MX Player began life as a cross-platform media player developed by South Korea’s J2 Interactive. In June 2018, Times Internet, part of India’s giant Times conglomerate acquired a controlling stake MX Player for $140 million and re-launched it as a video streamer. It hired former Eros Now COO Karan Bedi as CEO.
In October last year, Amazon India completed the deal to acquire assets of MX Player, including its app, and combined it with its AVOD platform Amazon miniTV to create a new free streaming service called Amazon MX Player.
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