Netflix India has introduced an eclectic programming slate for 2025, playing on its strengths, innovating with genres and titles and setting the stage for a year filled with loads of entertainment. Ahead of the big slate announcement in Mumbai on Monday, Monika Shergill, vice-president, content, Netflix India, took t2 through the highlights of what promises to be a cracking year for the streaming giant.

What are the highlights of the Netflix India slate for 2025? What are you concentrating more on this year?

Comedies, like last year, are a big flavour of the slate. The Great Indian Kapil Show will be back with its third season and we are going to inject some really fun things into that. Rom-com is the new flavour... we have four promising titles this year. There is a very exciting series called The Royals... a fun, comedic, colourful, aspirational love story between an arrogant prince, played by Ishaan Khatter, and a startup CEO, which is Bhumi Pednekar. It has an interesting ensemble cast... Zeenat Aman, Dino Morea, Nora Fatehi, Sakshi Tanwar.... We also have three rom-com films. The first one out of the door is Dhoom Dhaam (Yami Gautam Dhar-Pratik Gandhi), a wedding night caper which has a very beautiful love story at its heart. It releases on Valentine’s Day.

Then we have Nadaaniyan, which is Ibrahim Ali Khan’s debut film (and stars Khushi Kapoor). He is very good in the film, which has great music and a very relevant YA (Young Adult) theme. It also has a great ensemble cast comprising Suniel Shetty, Dia Mirza and Mahima Chaudhary, and is directed by debutant Shauna Gautam. We have a mature rom-com, again from Dharmatic, called Aap Jaisa Koi. It has Madhavan, whose character is at an age where he has not managed to find love and now he is desperate to find love. It is a beautiful, soft, funny romance where he finds his ladylove in a much younger character, played by Fatima Sana Shaikh, and we see how the age gap pans out.

Which will be your biggest titles of this year?

We have the Aryan Khan-created series (Stardom). That is going to be an absolute masala entertainer. That is our tentpole series for 2025.

There is Jewel Thief, which is Siddharth Anand’s diamond heist thriller. It is an adrenaline-pumping, daring heist film with Saif Ali Khan pitted against Jaideep Ahlawat. It is our tentpole Netflix Original film.

We also have big returning seasons. There is Khakee: The Bengal Chapter, which is way bigger than Season One. It has got Bumbada (Prosenjit), Jeet and many other actors from Bengal. It is the the perfect binge-watch series. Rana Naidu 2 is going to be very exciting, with Arjun Rampal and Kriti Kharbanda joining the cast.

Delhi Crime 3 will focus on a human trafficking network, with Huma Qureshi joining this season. Kohrra 2 has Mona Singh in the cast this time. And we did kick off the year on a winning note with Black Warrant and The Roshans.

The Greatest Rivalry: India vs Pakistan will appeal to even those viewers who are not cricket fans. We have also lined up a unique non-fiction special called Dining with the Kapoors, based on the famed meals the Kapoor family has and the way they bond over food.

Even with our licensed titles, we are looking at a big slate. Last year, in both Hindi and Telugu, Netflix India had seven of the top 10 box-office winners. In Tamil, we had four. This year’s slate promises to be bigger.

We have two big titles with YRF (Yash Raj Films). Both are visually different, spectacular and very riveting in the story spaces they capture. Adi (Aditya) Chopra has show-run both. One is Mandala Murders, a supernatural murder mystery set in the Indian heartland. It is written and directed by Gopi Puthran, who directed Mardaani 2. The other is Akka, written and directed by Dharmaraj Shetty. Akka is a real-world story with fantasy elements. It has Keerthy Suresh and Radhika Apte in the lead.

February-end will witness the release of Dabba Cartel. It is going to be a defining series for Netflix India. It is about middle-class women running a dabba business and how it crosses wires with gangs and has a pharmaceutical scandal.

Glory is a sports drama set in the world of competitive boxing. It has Divyenndu, Pulkit Samrat and Suvinder Vicky and is directed by Karan Anshuman. It is based on a family’s ambition for an Olympic medal.

You are pencilling in sport programming into the slate this year...

Yes. WWE will be launching on Netflix India in a very big way, with Hindi commentary. Outside of the US, India is the biggest fan base for WWE. It is at the cusp of sports and entertainment and will include storylines and big stars from the WWE world. It will be available in all formats, from SmackDown to Raw to NXT to Specials. We have always strived to have sports-adjacent programming and now we will have WWE.

And you also have Anuja releasing on your platform on February 5, which is eyeing an Oscar win in March...

Anuja is a very sensitive story. It is being supported by the finest people across the world and being championed by Guneet (Monga Kapoor), Priyanka (Chopra Jonas) and Mindy (Kaling). The director (Adam Graves) and producer (Suchitra Mattai) have worked with the kids from Salaam Baalak Trust (in Delhi). It is a beautiful story of two sisters. Within the timeframe of a short film, it makes you experience the emotions that you would feel in a full-length feature film. Between the relationship and the issue at its heart, you go through an emotional journey in just those few minutes and that is the power of the story, the honest performances and how the director has kept the camera in a way which makes you feel it almost doesn’t exist. It will make you ask whether it is reality shot like reality television or is it a scripted feature?

What are the broad learnings from your performance in recent years that have informed and influenced your 2025 slate?

Over the years, we have been asked why we have so many titles a year, that no one really programmes as much as Netflix does. The reason is that India is such a diverse and heterogeneous country... you cannot serve this country with one or two kinds of programming. You have to cater to different audience cohorts and when you do so, your learning is exceptional in every journey that you take with a story. If it crosses multiple audience cohorts, it becomes a massive hit. So what is a wide content relevant to a core target audience and how does it widen out? How does it become more and more wide? You take the same subject... it depends on how you programme it, what elements you add to it... sometimes it is the packaging, the track and the treatment which determine how wide a title can go.

There are also some titles that are an experiment. Maamla Legal Hai was a breakout title for us last year. We programmed it as an experimental title. A lot of people called us out, saying: ‘How can Netflix be in Patparganj court? This is not Netflix. This is not cool.’ But we said that we are cool where we have to be.

We are an aspirational brand but we are also a relatable entertainment service and that matters so much to us. In fact, that is the primary goal. How we do things will always make us aspirational but what we do is meant for our audience. It is meant to be relatable, it is meant to bring the service closer to our audiences and be relevant at all times.

Every single story that we curate every year helps us introduce a new genre. India loves multi-genre programming. We consistently take ahead lots of learnings which we put in our writing. We have a huge responsibility as a pure-play entertainment brand and as the only pure-play entertainment brand to keep constantly innovating. If we do not innovate, then we are not pushing creative boundaries and we are not doing justice to what Netflix stands for.