Indian cinema is having a moment on Netflix — and increasingly, it’s first-timers leading the charge.
For Ruchikaa Kapoor Sheikh, director of original films at Netflix India, the convergence is a direct outcome of how the team approaches creative partnerships. “The more authentic, the more local they’ve been, we’ve actually seen them break out and become far more global,” she tells Variety. “We never wake up saying, ‘This is a global title.'” The philosophy, she explains, is to back filmmakers with distinctive, rooted convictions and trust that the work will travel on its own terms.
The numbers support the approach. An Indian film or series has appeared in Netflix’s Global Top 10 every week throughout 2024 and 2025, and the volume of Indian titles on that list has grown sixfold since reporting began in July 2021. In 2025 alone, Indian content on the platform was viewed for more than 3.4 billion hours across 75 countries, the equivalent of roughly 65 million hours per week. Over 70% of Netflix viewing globally happens with subtitles or dubs, Kapoor Sheikh notes, and Indian titles are finding audiences in both high- and low-diaspora markets alike – from Argentina and Egypt to South Korea, Morocco, Bolivia and Taiwan.
“Toaster,” which premiered on the platform April 15, is Das Chaudhary’s first feature and KAMPA’s debut production. The film is set in Mumbai and built around a miserly protagonist whose circumstances spiral into escalating absurdity. Rao, who also stars in the film, says the project came to him and Patralekhaa as a single-page pitch that they developed over several months before bringing it to Netflix. “There’s no formula to it,” he tells Variety. “You’d rather make something that you are really excited about.”
The title itself was a deliberate choice rather than an accident of development. “Somebody sitting in Japan, in the U.S., U.K., Thailand, India, would know what a toaster is,” he says. The quirk of it, he reasoned, was the point – unusual enough to prompt a click, simple enough to travel anywhere.
Kapoor Sheikh notes that the move toward emerging voices has been intentional from the beginning, and the track record spans several years and genres. The platform has worked with first- and second-time directors including Honey Trehan (“Raat Akeli Hai”), Aditya Nimbalkar (“Sector 36”), Arjun Varain Singh (“Kho Gaye Hum Kahan”), Vivek Soni (“Meenakshi Sundareshwar,” “Aap Jaisa Koi”) and Yashowardhan Mishra, whose “Kathal: A Jackfruit Mystery” became the first Netflix India film to win the Indian National Film Award for best Hindi-language film. The process, she says, now reaches beyond Mumbai to encompass writers turning directors and regional talent moving across language lines. “The hunger that comes from new voices becomes very important to keep the flywheel going,” she says.
Source: variety.com