South Africa Streaming Bollywood. Exploring Indian players’ expansion strategy and local partnerships

This paper explores the transnational expansion of Indian media players in South Africa with the recent proliferation of streaming platforms, their localization strategies, and the evolution in the production and circulation of Indian content. While there is an abundant literature on the expansion of United-States (Netflix, Amazon Prime) and European (Canal +, Orange) platforms’ players in Africa and research on the deployment of Chinese media such as Star Times is emerging (Jedlowski, 2021), there are still very few studies on the case of Indian companies expansion and localization in sub-Saharan countries. More specifically, I will focus on the trajectory of the Indian company Zee Entertainment as part of its regional deployment in a context where Africa has become a central focal point of its "hyperlocal strategy". How have streaming platforms reconfigured circulation and production of Indian content in South Africa as well as collaboration and local partnerships between Indian and national players? To what extent does the localization strategy of Indian players echo or differ from those of other major global players, thereby highlighting contrasting processes of transnational expansion? How does Bollywood content also fit into the strategy of South African players? Based on the results of an exploratory research that combines political economy of communication and ethnographic approach with qualitative interviews conducted in 2023 and 2024 in Johannesburg and CapeTown, this paper aims to contribute more broadly to research on the Global media global expansion in Africa and on cultural and technological flows and partnerships between South markets.