EXCLUSIVE: Is Netflix eyeing an Indian version of Love is Blind or Too Hot to Handle?
In an exclusive interview with Deadline, Netflix India VP of Content Monika Shergill revealed her service was working on developing Netflix-owned unscripted formats locally, without revealing their identities.
“We are working on a couple of very interesting, big global formats, which are Netflix formats, and they will be coming to India,” she said.
While Netflix does not own either Too Hot to Handle and Love is Blind, it the has exclusive international production deals in place for both and has created numerous versions. The underlying format rights remain with Too Hot to Handle program maker Fremantle and The North Road Company-owned Kinetic Content, the maker of Love is Blind.
Pushed on the identity of the shows, Shergill said: “I am not at liberty to share right now, but something exciting will be announced very soon.”
The news came as Shergill was outlining the breakout success of another format for which Netflix is rights owner – the Balaji Telefilms-produced “captive reality” show Lock Upp. The show, which debuted on June 27 and will continue playing until August 5, follows celebrity contestants, known as inmates, who live in a jail-themed setting and compete in tasks while facing eliminations.
Shergill and Lock Upp creator Ekta Kapoor said the show has become “the most defining entertainment conversation,” with the Netflix chief revealing it has amassed 50 million hours viewed since launch last month (“the equivalent of 5,700 years,” according to Shergill) and accrued 2.5 billion social media interactions within three weeks of launch.
The spent two weeks in the Global Top (Non-English) Series list, as Indian unscripted series grow in global popularity. It began with five episodes in the first week, but the “on-audience demand and overwhelming success” has seen this upped to six. “Up to the finale, we’ll just be going nonstop,” she added. Netflix’s most recent What We Watched data dump revealed the show is the second-most watched series by hours.
Kapoor, a veteran film and TV producer in India, outlined her theory behind the show’s popularity. “It’s the fact that celebrities are coming in with tags and judgment, and they’re able to discuss that why they are like that, or what has made them like that, so their secrets become their lifelines,” she said. “It’s one way they touch base with their own humanity, their own understanding, their own traumas.”
The series actually began life in 2022 on ALTBalaji, the now defunct streamer that Balaji Telefilms operated, and MX Player, which was recently subsumed into Prime Video India. Netflix revitalized it with Bollywood stars Farah Khan and Riteish Deshmukh hosting, and a contestant cast including actors Dheeraj Dhoopar, Shivangi Joshi, Harshad Chopda and Shilpa Shinde.
Kapoor was quick to credit Shergill and Netflix for supporting her vision to revive the show, revealing she rejected two other offers to move ahead with the Los Gatos-based streamer.
“When you work with a platform, you want to work with a platform that takes your concept or your idea bigger than you thought, and supports your vision,” she said. “For a creator, there is nothing bigger than support – and it doesn’t have to be only financial. It is also because sense of ownership is mutual, and respect is mutual. If make a show for Netflix, I know that Netflix won’t abandon me midway, because it’s not doing well. They will run with me until the last mile.”
Pressed by Deadline, Shergill and Kapoor declined to confirm a second season of Lock Upp on Netflix or if the show will be adapted outside of India. However, Shergill did say: “The format is getting a lot of interest internally. I cannot confirm either of those questions, but since it’s doing so well, I think it has a long life.”
Comedy focus
Besides adapting global formats, Shergill’s other focus at Netflix India is in comedy and growing local talent. One example is stand-up Samay Raina, who first appeared on the streamer on long-running talk series The Great Indian Kapil Show. His chemistry with host and fellow comedian Kapil Sharma was such that Shergill, who had already ordered a stand-up special from him, began a conversation about bringing his YouTube show, India’s Got Latent, to Netflix.
A co-exclusive deal for Season 2 was struck, which Shergill calls a “great experiment” and potentially the precusor to similar agreements with both platforms, Raina and his audience all responding positively.
“The thinking was very simple, actually,” she said “We really want to be the best home for comedy and the best comedic talent in the country. Samay had come for The Great Indian Kapil Show, and their partnership and that episode worked so well that when we were talking about his stand-up special, and it came up that Latent Season 2 was coming out, it was just intuitive that, uh, the show could exist on Netflix in an ad-free version for his fans.
“It just shows that the best kind of creative actually should sit in experiences and different kinds of experiences. We have a huge audience for it on Netflix India.”
The Great Indian Kapil Show, which followed on from Sharma’s network shows The Kapil Sharma Show and Comedy Nights with Kapil, is headed for a fifth season and stand-up specials from many of India’s top performers such as Zakir Khan have become top-performing productions. As such, the comedy space “is something that we want to own in India,” said Shergill, and projects are underway wth several big names.
While Shergill feels the momentum is with Netflix right now, the service is competing in one of the toughest streaming markets in the world, where JioHotstar, Sony LIV and Prime Video, now including MX Player, are all key players. Indeed, in March 2024, Mike Hopkins, the Head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, said India was responsible for new streaming subscribers than anywhere else bar the U.S. for his service.
However, only about a quarter of the 601 million streaming consumers in India pay for services, according to Ormax Media research from September 2025, so Netflix has a fight on its hands, but Shergill and her team are taking a bullish outlook.
“We’ve been having great momentum,” said. Shergill. “We are one of the most loved entertainment, streaming entertainment services in India. Yes, there is fierce competition, but everyone’s offering and value proposition is different.
“What defines Netflix is the ability to do premium and aspirational content and yet make it the most accessible. If I were to just give you a sense of where we are today, the biggest theatrical movies are on Netflix across languages. The biggest premium dramas are on Netflix. The biggest unscripted entertainment is on Netflix today with Kapil Sharma, Lock Upp, Fabulous Lives of Desi Wives and Desi Bling, and the biggest original documentaries consistently are on Netflix. So are most of the awards.
“I have great regard for all our competitive services, and we learn a lot from them, but I think the the value and the edge that Netflix brings is our constant experimentation and innovation. No one programs as diversely as we do. No one takes as many bets as we do, whether big, medium or small, and that is what has consistently made our offering the strongest.
“We are actually seeing India being one of the biggest growth markets for Netflix all over the world.”
‘Operation Safed Sagar’
While much of the recent focus has been on unscripted, the next big bet from Netflix in India is Operation Safed Sagar, a high-budget military drama series focused on the Indian Air Force’s 1999 aerial campaign during the Kargil War against Pakistan.
Shergill calls the show, which is latest in India’s long line of productions on its military prowess, “a very large format VFX extravaganza.” Matchbox Shots and Feel Good Films are making the show in direct collaboration with the Indian Air Force.
“The Lock Upp finale is going to be a very big conversation wave in India given the way the pre-finale weeks are looking, and immediately after that, we have Operation Safed Sagar, our biggest show in the tenth year of Netflix in India. There are a whole slew of shows after that, which will be addressing the different audience tastes and moods that we cater to – really the whole spectrum of audience.”
