iWorld
Netflix turns up the volume on margins and Warner Bros
LOS ANGELES: Netflix has stopped apologising. The company that once dismissed advertising, theatrical releases and live sports with the zeal of a reformed smoker is now embracing all three—and throwing in a $50 billion acquisition for good measure. On 20 January, co-chief executives Gregory Peters and Theodore Sarandos laid out a vision that would make even the most acquisitive media mogul blush, during an investor conference call.
The numbers are intoxicating. Revenue hit 16 per cent growth in 2025, with operating profit surging 30 per cent. The streaming behemoth is guiding towards $51 billion in revenue for 2026—a 14 per cent jump—with operating margins stretching to 31.5 per cent. Free cash flow? A cool $6 billion, thank you very much. All while the company barely registers 10 per cent of television time in its major markets. There’s still blood in the water.
But the real plot twist is advertising. Netflix’s ad business, launched a mere 18 months ago, brought in 2.5 times more revenue in 2025 than the year before. Management expects it to double again in 2026, reaching roughly $3 billion. That’s not yet “primary” enough to move the needle on a $51 billion business, but it’s gaining momentum faster than a Bridgerton plot turn.
Then there’s the Warner Bros Studios and HBO acquisition—described by management as a “strategic accelerant”, which is corporate speak for “we want it badly but we’ll pretend we’re being prudent.”
The pending deal will add a century of intellectual property, a theatrical distribution engine pulling in $4 billion of global box office, and HBO’s prestige brand. Sarandos was refreshingly blunt about the company’s theatrical volte-face: “This is a business and not a religion.” Translation: we were wrong, we’ve changed our minds, and we’re not sorry about it.
The acquisition will see 85 per cent of the combined company’s revenue still flowing from Netflix’s current core business. Warner Bros films will continue their 45-day theatrical window, a compromise that would have been heresy at Netflix five years ago. Sarandos insisted the deal is “pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-worker, pro-creator, and pro-growth”—essentially pro-everything except perhaps pro-competition authorities, who are currently scrutinising the merger.

Live events are multiplying like rabbits. Netflix has executed over 200 live events, from Chris Rock specials to Formula One drivers playing golf with professional golfers, to the epic roast of Tom Brady. Coming attractions include a hot-dog-eating grudge match (yes, really), a Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul boxing bout, two NFL games on Christmas Day, and weekly WWE coverage. India is now the number two and number three country for paid net additions and revenue growth respectively. The company’s global content machine is humming.
Gaming and podcasts represent the next frontier. The cloud-first gaming strategy is expanding to televisions, with party games like Boggle showing “strong uptake.” Video podcasts launched this month, positioning Netflix as a modern talk-show platform with “hundreds” of shows rather than a single broad one. These are small bets for now—representing “a relatively small portion of total view hours”—but Netflix has a track record of starting small and scaling fast.
The company’s proprietary ad-tech stack is now fully operational, enabling new formats, interactive capabilities and better monetisation. Ad-supported plan revenue per member remains below ad-free tiers, but that gap is closing. Management sees this as an opportunity rather than a problem: more room to grow means more revenue upside.
Content spending will hit $17 billion in 2026, growing slower than revenue—a deliberate strategy to expand margins whilst competitors bleed cash. Netflix has secured global licensing deals with Sony (a first-of-its-kind global pay-one window), expanded its Universal partnership, and added Paramount’s slate. The content amortisation is forecast to grow roughly 10 per cent year-on-year, with the slate more evenly distributed across quarters compared with 2025’s back-heavy schedule.
Engagement remains the obsession. Total view hours grew two per cent in 2025, with branded originals up nine per cent in the second half. Management’s “primary quality metric” hit an all-time high—corporate jargon for “our shows are bloody good.”

Churn improved year-on-year, retention is “among the best in the industry,” and customer satisfaction is at record levels. Peters was careful to note that “all hours of engagement are not the same”: an hour of Stranger Things fandom is worth more than an hour of background viewing.
The basic tier is being phased out, with members migrated to higher-value plans. In the United States, that means a $6.99 ad-supported tier with two streams, higher definition and downloads—or ad-free standard and premium options. The company’s confidence in rolling this out to the US and France signals the migration is working.
YouTube remains the elephant in the room. Together, Netflix and YouTube command about 50 per cent of streaming to televisions in America. But Sarandos isn’t sweating the competition: “We’re focused on that other 80 per cent of total TV time.”
The two services feed each other, with Netflix trailers and behind-the-scenes content proving wildly popular on YouTube. Besides, YouTube’s model can’t support the big creative bets— Stranger Things, Wednesday, Bridgerton—that define Netflix’s offering.
The regulatory approval process for Warner Bros looms large. Management expressed confidence, citing the deal’s vertical nature (Netflix doesn’t currently operate theatrical distribution or a television studio) and the hyper-competitive media landscape.
Sarandos pointed out that the BBC is producing original content for YouTube, Instagram is “coming next” for television, and the Oscars now air on YouTube. “TV is not what we grew up on,” he said. “TV is now just about everything.”
The 2026 content slate is predictably stuffed: Bridgerton season four, One Piece season two, The Night Agent season three, the Stranger Things finale, and Greta Gerwig’s Narnia. There’s a Peaky Blinders film, a heist caper with Denzel Washington and Robert Pattinson, and Charlize Theron in Apex. Sarandos promised “a bunch of surprises” on top of that lot.
Netflix’s transformation from DVD-by-mail upstart to global entertainment colossus is nearly complete. The company that revolutionised binge-watching is now muscling into live events, theatre chains, advertising, gaming and podcasts. It’s acquiring HBO—perhaps the only brand with more prestige cachet than Netflix itself—and doing it whilst expanding margins and printing cash.
Peters summed it up neatly: Netflix still represents just seven per cent of the addressable market for consumer and advertising spend. “Tons of room ahead of us,” he said.
With $51 billion in revenue on the horizon, a billion viewers approaching, and Warner Bros in the bag, Netflix isn’t just streaming entertainment anymore. It’s becoming entertainment itself. The only question left is whether regulators will let them finish the show.
iWorld
Netflix celebrates a decade in India with Shah Rukh Khan-narrated tribute film
MUMBAI: Netflix is celebrating ten years in India with a slick anniversary film voiced by Shah Rukh Khan, a nostalgic sprint through a decade that rewired how the country watches stories. The campaign doubles as both tribute and reminder: streaming did not just enter Indian homes, it quietly rearranged them.
Roll back to 2016 and television still dictated schedules. Viewers waited weeks, sometimes months, for favourite films to appear on prime time. Family-friendly filters narrowed options further, and piracy often filled the gaps. Then Netflix arrived, softly but decisively, carrying a catalogue of international titles rarely seen in Indian theatres and placing them a click away. Old blockbusters and new releases suddenly coexisted on the same digital shelf.
The platform’s real inflection point came in 2018 with Sacred Games, a breakout series that refused to dilute India’s grit for global comfort. Audiences embraced its unvarnished tone, signalling readiness for stories that did not need box-office validation or censorship compromises. What followed was a steady procession of relatable narratives. Competitive-exam anxiety fuelled Kota Factory. College relationships unfolded in Mismatched. Everyday pressures, not grand spectacle, proved bankable.
Language barriers thinned as foreign series arrived with Hindi, Tamil and Telugu dubbing, expanding viewership beyond urban English-speaking pockets. Marketing mirrored the shift. For global releases such as Squid Game, Netflix leaned on regional creators and influencers to localise buzz and make international content feel native.
The library widened beyond fiction. Documentaries stepped out of festival circuits into living rooms. Stand-up comedians found scale. Established filmmakers, including Sanjay Leela Bhansali with Heeramandi, embraced the platform’s long-form canvas. Subscriber numbers swelled to 12.37 million in India, according to Demandsage, and behaviour followed suit. Late-night binges became routine. Friday release rituals loosened. Watch parties turned solitary screens into social events.
Economics demanded adjustment. Early subscription pricing carried a premium aura that deterred many households. Over time, Netflix recalibrated plans to align with Indian spending sensibilities, conceding that accessibility is as critical as content. To extend momentum around marquee titles, the platform also experimented with split-season releases, stretching anticipation and watch time.
The anniversary film, narrated by Shah Rukh Khan, captures the linguistic shift that mirrors the cultural one: from “Netflix pe kya dekha?” to “Netflix pe kya dekhein?” The question moved from recounting the past to planning the next binge. In ten years, Netflix morphed from foreign entrant to familiar fixture, exporting Indian stories abroad while importing global ones home. The remote no longer waits; it chooses, clicks and moves on. In the streaming age, patience is out, playlists are in, and the next episode is always one tap away.
e-commerce
Tulasi Mohan Padavala elevated to Associate Director at Blinkit
Gurugram: Blinkit has elevated Tulasi Mohan Padavala to associate director, capping a three-year climb inside the quick-commerce firm and signalling confidence in an executive steeped in ecommerce, category management and on-ground sales execution.
Padavala shared the update publicly, saying he was “happy to share” the promotion, a succinct announcement that nevertheless marks a notable step up within one of India’s fastest-moving delivery platforms. The new role follows nearly three years at Blinkit, where he most recently served as senior category manager from February 2023 to January 2026, focusing on strategic sourcing and assortment planning.
The promotion places Padavala in Blinkit’s mid-to-senior leadership tier at a time when the company continues to expand its rapid-delivery footprint and sharpen category economics. His brief tenure as associate director began in January 2026, with responsibilities expected to span category growth, supplier strategy and cross-functional execution.
Before Blinkit, Padavala spent a short but intensive stint as global ecommerce manager at Wholsum Foods, the parent of Slurrp Farm and Millé, between November 2022 and February 2023. There he worked on digital marketplace expansion and online retail operations, adding a direct-to-consumer and international ecommerce layer to his résumé.
A longer stretch at Amazon shaped much of his cross-border commerce experience. As business development manager for Amazon’s India Global Selling programme from February 2021 to October 2022, Padavala helped Indian D2C brands enter the North American market. His remit ranged from seller recruitment and category revenue management to coordination with industry bodies, regulators and logistics partners. Key outcomes included launching more than 50 D2C consumable brands in the United States, driving a cumulative gross merchandise sales figure of $1m in FY21-22, tripling sales for participating brands during Prime Day through marketing and visibility levers, growing the monthly recurring revenue of more than 10 newly launched sellers from zero to an average $20,000 each, and negotiating ecommerce partnerships that reduced initial launch costs by 20 per cent.
Padavala’s earlier career was forged in the field rather than the dashboard. At Coffee Day Group, he spent close to five years across multiple sales leadership roles. As sales manager in the Greater Delhi Area from July 2019 to January 2021, he led vending-machine and consumables sales for small and medium enterprises with a team of more than 15 assistant and territory sales managers, managed over 2,000 clients, drove upselling and cross-selling, maintained channel partnerships and ensured timely collections. Prior to that, he served as area sales manager in Delhi between May 2018 and June 2019, handling south and east Delhi markets, and earlier in Hyderabad from April 2016 to May 2018, where he led Andhra Pradesh sales for the vending division, supervised service and logistics functions and managed a base of more than 600 machines with a four-member team.
His professional arc began with internships that combined analytics and process improvement. At Boehringer Ingelheim in 2015, Padavala analysed the impact of brand extension on the drug Pradaxa, identified key performance indicators through market research and assessed sales forecasts, recommendations that drew positive responses in pilot studies. Earlier, at Genpact in 2014, he automated manual sales-order backlog reporting using VBA and Excel, increasing efficiency by 800 per cent, and worked on benchmarking metrics within supply-chain planning processes.
From automating spreadsheets to scaling cross-border ecommerce and now steering quick-commerce categories, Padavala’s trajectory tracks the evolution of India’s retail economy itself. Blinkit’s bet is clear: blend data, discipline and delivery speed. The promotion formalises what his career already suggests. In the race for instant commerce, experience that moves from warehouse floors to global dashboards is no longer optional. It is the engine.
e-commerce
Bharatpe plays a super over as Rohit Sharma fronts T20 push
MUMBAI: When the stakes rise and seconds matter, even payments need a match-winning finish. That’s the cue for Bharatpe, which has rolled out Super Over, a nationwide campaign led by Indian cricket captain Rohit Sharma, timed neatly ahead of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
The campaign draws a straight line between the pulse of cricket and the pace of everyday digital payments. A new brand film taps into India’s emotional bond with the game, while positioning UPI as the quiet hero that keeps daily transactions ticking along at match speed.
As part of Super Over, users making payments via Bharatpe UPI can bag daily rewards ranging from match tickets and signed merchandise to a chance to watch a T20 World Cup fixture alongside Rohit Sharma himself. Both consumers and merchants are also assured Zillion Coins on every eligible transaction, adding a little extra sparkle to routine payments.
Behind the scenes, Bharatpe is also batting for safety. The platform is backed by Bharatpe Shield, a fraud-protection layer designed to offer enhanced security, comprehensive coverage and dedicated support aimed at helping users transact with greater confidence as digital payments scale up.
Announcing the campaign, Bharatpe head of marketing Shilpi Kapoor said Super Over mirrors the aspirations of everyday Indians, combining speed, security and instant rewards to make UPI transactions feel both reliable and rewarding.
The campaign will play out across digital platforms, social media and on-ground activations nationwide, staying live through the T20 World Cup season proof that in cricket, as in payments, timing is everything.
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