Netflix to stream Vishal Bhardwaj’s ‘Khufiya’ on 5 October

livemint.com:

New Delhi: Netflix, the American streaming giant, will premiere Khufiya, a thriller directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, on 5 October. It stars Tabu, Ali Fazal, Wamiqa Gabbi, among others and is based on Amar Bhushan’s espionage novel Escape to Nowhere. Netflix has finally decided to introduce curbs on password sharing in India, a move aimed at building scale as well as ringing in revenue growth, said media experts.

However, this could result in significant decline in subscriber numbers, they added. Earlier this year, the company said it would start sending out emails to subscribers sharing the service with people outside the household in India. The initiative was introduced in several other markets in the past few months.

To be sure, a full clampdown on the shared accounts has not been in place yet, but has only been notified. A “Netflix Household“ is a collection of devices connected to the internet at the main place where the service is watched, and can be set using a TV device. The clampdown will involve the need to enter verification codes for access to the service for up to seven days, or connecting to a Wi-Fi network in the primary location at least once every 31 days.

Netflix will initially send emails to users who are using an account outside a single household and will be asked to transfer their profile to a fresh subscription. Revenue in the April to June quarter grew 3% year-on-year (y-o-y) for Netflix, driven by a 6% increase in average paid membership, while the average revenue per member (ARM) declined 3% y-o-y. The y-o-y ARM decline was driven by a combination of limited price increases over the past 12 months, leading up to the launch of paid sharing, timing of paid net additions, primarily late in the quarter