India's Eros Now Signs Licensing Deal With Chinese Video Giant iQiyi

The agreement will see the Indian digital platform license its vast catalog of Indian films to the Baidu-owned service dubbed the "Netflix of China."


Eros Now, the OTT platform owned by leading Indian film and entertainment company Eros International, has signed a content licensing deal with China's largest online video streaming service iQiyi, dubbed the "Netflix of China."


The deal will see Mumbai-based Eros licensing its vast catalog of Indian films, comprising over 11,000 titles spanning multiple languages including Hindi language Bollywood. Financial terms of the agreement were not given.


iQiyi is owned by Chinese search giant Baidu and claims over 500 million monthly active users. Eros Now claims 113 million registered users worldwide with 10.1 million paying subscribers.


Eros Now said that the agreement with iQiyi makes it the first South Asian OTT player to make inroads into the Chinese digital space.


China is already proving to be a lucrative market for Bollywood films with such hits as Aamir Khan's Dangal, which pulled in $190 million last year in the Middle Kingdom.


Meanwhile, Eros Now also announced a television distribution partnership for Indonesia with Chinese smartphone and electronics giant Xiaomi. The agreement offers Eros Now's content library on Xiami's Mi TV smart television sets at a monthly subscription of $7.99 (26,000 Indonesian rupiahs) and an annual subscription at $71.88 (260,000 Indonesia rupiahs).


Eros International recently announced that it had concluded the sale of a 5 percent stake to Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Limited for a total cash consideration of $46.6 million. RIL also owns leading media and broadcasting company Network18, which runs the Viacom18 Networks' India joint venture.


Eros International's upcoming titles include Anurag Kashyap's Bollywood romantic drama Manmarziyaan, which premieres at Toronto, ahead of its Sept. 14 release.