Prime Video Presents 2026
Kelly Day (Vice President of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios International), Nicole Clemens (Vice President of International Originals, Amazon MGM Studios) and Gaurav Gandhi (Vice President, APAC & ANZ, Prime Video) in a Fireside Chat with Karan Johar
Karan Johar: How’s everyone? Are you excited? All right, it’s good to see you back in India again, Kelly.
Kelly Day: Thank you.
Karan Johar: I think you’re loving us a lot. You keep coming back.
Kelly Day: I love coming to India. This is my fourth trip in four years and my third Prime Video Presents, and it just gets bigger and better every year.
Karan Johar: Well, I’m just saying, it’s great to have you back. We’re very excited and here’s to many, many more years that we can be on the stage like this and have some fun, with many new and exciting updates.
Kelly Day: Thank you and thank you for hosting it again.
Karan Johar: Thank you. Welcome, Nicole, to India.
Nicole Clemens: Thank you.
Karan Johar: How does it feel?
Nicole Clemens: Great to be here.
Karan Johar: It’s amazing to have you here. You joined the Prime Video team last year with a huge charter leading the International Originals teams globally. Congratulations on that, by the way.
Nicole Clemens: Thank you so much.
Karan Johar: What have been your impressions on the scale of Originals here in India?
Nicole Clemens: I absolutely love our slate. I think that India is the most diverse country, and it’s reflected in our slate. And the (audience) base here is probably the biggest.
The cultural variety is really reflected in all of our films and television shows. We know that cultural specificity, and combining universal themes, builds customer love and fandom, and we’ve seen a tremendous success with Indian Originals, like The Family Man, Mirzapur, Paatal Lok, Farzi, and so many more.
The strength of our franchises is in travelability. Indian content is core to our international success.
What stands out for me is that 25% of our shows and our audience are actually coming from outside India. And the content is able to travel beyond the country of origin and resonate across Prime Video locales. This really allows my teammates to think big, and we’re discovering authentic local voices and connecting them with local audiences.
We are showcasing extraordinary talents from everywhere, not just traditional production centres. We’ve launched over 100 shows in production and development, doubling down on building IPs. Over 60% of our Original series have gone into multiple seasons, and we have a few seasons under development, which is an extraordinary score-credit. It really speaks to the quality and the fan base of the shows.
I am really excited to present our slate announcements for the returning series, our newer IPs, like Farzi, Call Me Bae, and Dahaad. It’s not just that, but we’re also thrilled to announce that India has made its first streaming superheroes launch the Kalyug Warriors. This is going to be amazing. And I’m really excited to work with our creators from India and build our slate and take stories from India to the World.
Karan Johar: Thank you, Nicole. That was amazing. This is truly exciting. And all of us on behalf of Dharma and Dharmatic Entertainment, we’re so glad to collaborate with you and the Prime Video team in India, to create many, many, exciting shows and just outstanding content. I’m really excited about that. So, thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.
Kelly, you are the head of Prime Video International and now global marketing. Now tell us, how does India fit into your global juggernaut? Is India top of mind for you?
Kelly Day: Well, India is by far one of the most important markets for us anywhere around the world. And you heard of it earlier from Sonal and Shilangi, where they were talking about just sort of the scale of the audience and the member base here in India, and the depth of engagement. This continues to be a core acquisition driver for the Prime programme, and it’s really driven by the scale and diversity of our Indian Originals.
It is one of our biggest Originals programs anywhere in the world. And it is reflective of what we know that our customers here in India really love. And I think you’re going to see as we go through the day today, the quality of the slate, the diversity of the slate, the language diversity, the cultural diversity, it’s absolutely incredible, and it continues to be just a driving engine and building and growing Prime here in India. And really, is what makes India one of our largest, most strategic, most important markets, and why I keep coming back, why we continue to invest in the business and in the service here, is because we really believe in them.
Karan Johar: Now, since you have a global view of all Prime Video territories across the world, what do you see as unique in the India playbook?
Kelly Day: India is incredibly unique, but I’ll sort of start with, a bit about our business model, which we think is unique and really stands out in the SVOD landscape and the streaming landscape. Because, we like to talk about the diversity of the different kinds of businesses, but it really starts with customer selection.
So, our goal is always to be able to deliver the broadest possible selection to customers, and then we make that selection available, across, different business models. So, at the core, of course, is our SVOD program, that is driven, like I said, by our Originals. It’s part of the Prime membership. And then beyond that, you can add on Channels like Apple TV+. Our TVOD store, we actually pioneered, I think, TVOD here in India through our rental program.
And then in some regions around the world, we have an AVOD or ad-supported business. Here in India, of course, we have Amazon MX player, which is our ad-supported service. And so, whether you want to watch through Prime, whether you want to watch free and ad-supported, whether you want to rent a movie, there’s a variety of different ways that you can watch.
But I think the thing that is particularly unique is the innovation that the team here in India has really driven based off of the diversity of the region, which is unique in the world. And so that’s led to things like, for example, our various tiered member offerings to create more accessibility – you may want to sign up for Prime Video Mobile Edition, you may want to sign up for even for Prime shopping program, which is a shopping-only plan, you could sign up for Prime Lite or your full member Prime program.
So that type of diversity and accessibility and price point is something that was pioneered here, but we have now been able to extend that to multiple countries around the world.
The second is, I think if you look at the content diversity, it started with primarily developing Originals in Hindi, and then, extended into Tamil and Telugu. And we’re continuing to really look for opportunities to create more local experiences through more subbing and dubbing and things like that.
I do think that there is tremendous innovation that’s happening here. We love the diversity of the country. And I’m so proud of and excited that the team here has been able to just continually kind of move the needle, push the bar, and we have been able to leverage those learnings in so many places around the world.
Karan Johar: You have such an acute understanding of the market space, and that really kind of like excites us as just the fact that, you are prioritising in India in such a solid way. And have understood the syntax of our audiences, because we do have wide diversity, there are so many languages and, so many genres that appeal to different demographic audiences. I’m glad that you have a deep insight into that and that only makes our jobs easier.
Karan Johar: Gaurav, Prime Video has been here in India for now nearly 10 years, almost a decade in, Tell us, how you are continuing to build the business here, Gaurav. What are your biggest priorities, Gaurav?
Gaurav Gandhi: Thanks, Karan. First of all, we are in our 10th year. So, I am so proud of our team and everything our Partners have done for Prime Video, Prime Program. I think our journey for the past 9-10 years has been as much about building the category as much as building Prime Video. From the time we started out as SVOD business, we have built the habit of creating premium content – with partnerships of creators – such as yourself.
Then, as we look ahead, I would look at our priorities in four big areas – First of all, there’s so much headroom ahead for streaming and for Prime Video to grow in India; we want to make Prime and Prime Video even more accessible to customers around the country. Whether it’s through tiers, or through all the amazing content and through opportunity with Amazon MX Player. So that’s one big priority area for us.
The second one is the point Nicole was mentioning about the content traveling around the world. We talked about how the Korean content is traveling around the world, how anime is travelling. We’ve seen how Indian content has been traveling around the world. We already see that with 25% of our viewing comes from outside India.
But we are in the very early days of that. There’s tremendous opportunity for us to build that out and be very intentional about it.
Take our content around the world. We’re doing a lot that with making sure our movies or day and day of is going to 240 countries and then stream, which is not possible in the actual theatrical world. So, I think that’s one intentional thing.
The third thing I would say is that we’ve had great success on the IPs and shows and series. 60% of them are in subsequent seasons and big franchises. We talked about The Family Man, Panchayat, Farzi, Paatal Lok, Mirzapur, and so many more. We have taken them to new formats, newer seasons. What we’re extremely proud and intentional about is that we continue to have the machine to build these. Even the last one and a half years, since last time we met, Call Me Bae, Dupahiya, Traitors, Gram Chikitsalay, so many have emerged. All of these have second season coming, we’re announcing many of them today. Just this year, we had a great start with Daldal. Our latest Original film, Subedaar, has been great.
So, I feel like there is an intentionality and focus to build more IPs. And the last one I would say is our focus on supercharging our movies business. There we are thinking about what the demand and supply goals are. We know there’s demand for movies in films across languages, across the board.
But how we make them available to all customers. So, we talked about pan-Indian movies, we talked about how we’re taking them across the country. We talked about day-to-day release globally in many countries. Much of that, if you recall, with Shershaah, what we did in that era. But I think what we’re moving towards is Movie Rentals/TVODs.
I think on the supply side, there’s a few more interesting parts. Where we actually started our journey with just licensing films and moving into co-productions And now today we’re announcing theatrical films from Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, and then come to Prime Video post theatrical. So, we are very focused on supercharging that part. These are the four big things that we focus on among many others.
But as we said, Amazon is just day one. And we are super excited.
Karan Johar: Wow, you have busy, busy, busy days ahead. Not just streaming, taking on film and that. As I can tell you with experience, you will have a handful with that.
Nicole, you have heard Gaurav out. And, of course, have endorsed every bit of his strategy. And you’ve been, of course, an experienced hand before. You’re here for the first time. So, again, we extend a warm welcome. But what I do want to know is what your biggest focus areas are for international originals around the world? Particularly for India?
Nicole Clemens: Well, my philosophy is really simple. It’s invested culturally specific authentic stories grounded in universal themes and emotions. We get the authenticity, right, these stories travel. They really resonate across borders.
Internationally, we’re seeing non-English titles ring the ground. And we’re seeing that English is no longer the default language of choice for global storytelling.
We’ve seen tremendous success with our content like the Spanish language Culpables trilogy of movies. The German series Maxton Hall, which is our most watched international series of all time. Proving that authentic local stories can travel worldwide. And we want to continue to develop more stories that have that potential. The emerging areas that we’re seeing are K-dramas that are continuing to dominate. And romance and thriller and supernatural genres traveling globally. And then from Japan, we’re seeing anime adaptations and manga to live action content showing really strong international appeal.
And for India, our focus just remains on premium quality with broad appeal. We’ve achieved that balance between premium production values and the stories that really connect with the local and diverse audiences to relatable themes rather than just specific genres.
It’s about quality that doesn’t compromise accessibility. We’ve also got an emerging genre with YA is having a moment not just in India but across the world. We’re really keen on expanding that under leveraged audience. We’ve got shows like Call Me Bae and our new movie Don’t Be Shy, which are bringing fresh perspectives to the market. Like Gaurav said, there’s a tremendous opportunity for a new IP. And we believe there’s a lot of more beautiful stories around the world for it to be told.
And we are constantly observing what resonates with our customers. And we’re on the lookout for new authentic stories that have the potential to connect with a really wide audience. Without giving away much, I can say that our slate really reflects our ambition.
