IMDb CEO Says Movie-Mad India Could Overtake US as Its Top User Base

Movie-mad Indians and the cheap data packs on their smartphones could make India the biggest user-base market for IMDb over the next five years, the Amazon-owned movie rating website said on Wednesday.

India is currently the site's second-highest user base worldwide, but that is likely to change, IMDb founder and Chief Executive Col Needham told Reuters.

"Film, television and music, as I am learning, are such a predominant part of the culture in India, it is a lovely fit with where IMDb is going," Needham said on the sidelines of a press event in Mumbai, where the company announced its top 10 list of Indian movies for 2018.

India is often pegged as the world's most prolific movie market, producing more than a thousand films a year in several languages, though exact data is scarce. India is also witnessing a revolution in smartphone growth and data consumption.

Needham said this mobile revolution was the reason his site had enjoyed exponential growth of 300 per cent in terms of the trailers and film content uploaded in Indian languages. He said IMDb had gone from the fourth highest user base to the second highest in two years, second only to the United States.

"We're growing in the US, but even at number 2, India is growing at a faster rate," Needham said.

He said IMDb planned to customise more features for Indian audiences, and reach out to stakeholders in the Indian film-industry about the company's premium product, IMDbPro.

IMDb says it has more than 250 million unique monthly visitors and a searchable database of more than 250 million data items from films, TV shows and other content globally.

© Thomson Reuters 2018