Indian cinema is having a moment on Netflix — and increasingly, it’s first-timers leading the charge.
Vivek Das Chaudhary’s debut feature “Toaster” has topped Netflix’s Global Top 10 Non-English Films chart, arriving at No. 1 as part of a broader wave of Indian titles — several of them from debut and early-stage directors — that have been stacking up on the list in recent weeks. It’s the latest evidence that the platform’s long-running strategy of backing emerging Indian filmmakers is generating returns well beyond the subcontinent.
The dark comedy, produced by actor Rajkummar Rao and his creative partner Patralekhaa under their newly launched KAMPA Films banner, joins “Accused” – directed by Anubhuti Kashyap in only her second feature, which topped the Non-English chart and entered the Top 10 in 74 countries, the widest reach ever recorded for an Indian title on the platform – and “Made in Korea,” Netflix’s first Tamil-language film shot in South Korea, now in its third consecutive week on the Global Top 10.
For Ruchikaa Kapoor Sheikh, director of original films at Netflix India, the convergence is a direct outcome of how the team approaches creative partnerships. “The more authentic, the more local they’ve been, we’ve actually seen them break out and become far more global,” she tells Variety. “We never wake up saying, ‘This is a global title.’” The philosophy, she explains, is to back filmmakers with distinctive, rooted convictions and trust that the work will travel on its own terms.
The numbers support the approach. An Indian film or series has appeared in Netflix’s Global Top 10 every week throughout 2024 and 2025, and the volume of Indian titles on that list has grown sixfold since reporting began in July 2021. In 2025 alone, Indian content on the platform was viewed for more than 3.4 billion hours across 75 countries, the equivalent of roughly 65 million hours per week. Over 70% of Netflix viewing globally happens with subtitles or dubs, Kapoor Sheikh notes, and Indian titles are finding audiences in both high- and low-diaspora markets alike – from Argentina and Egypt to South Korea, Morocco, Bolivia and Taiwan.
“Toaster,” which premiered on the platform April 15, is Das Chaudhary’s first feature and KAMPA’s debut production. The film is set in Mumbai and built around a miserly protagonist whose circumstances spiral into escalating absurdity. Rao, who also stars in the film, says the project came to him and Patralekhaa as a single-page pitch that they developed over several months before bringing it to Netflix. “There’s no formula to it,” he tells Variety. “You’d rather make something that you are really excited about.”
The title itself was a deliberate choice rather than an accident of development. “Somebody sitting in Japan, in the U.S., U.K., Thailand, India, would know what a toaster is,” he says. The quirk of it, he reasoned, was the point – unusual enough to prompt a click, simple enough to travel anywhere.
Patralekhaa, who took the lead as a hands-on producer while Rao concentrated on his performance, is at the center of KAMPA’s longer ambition – to tell stories on tightly managed budgets, with a particular emphasis on empowering new directors and writers. For Das Chaudhary, making his first feature, the experience differed from what he had expected of a major platform. “What I appreciated most was the trust they place in a filmmaker’s vision – not just supporting it, but helping it grow,” he tells Variety.
“Accused” took a different route to the screen. The concept for the film – a thriller centered on a lesbian couple, drawing on themes of sexual harassment and judgment – originated within Netflix India’s own creative team, which then sought out Kashyap for her empathetic handling of dramatic material. “They reached out to me because they were looking for a woman filmmaker,” Kashyap tells Variety. Once on board, she pulled the project toward restraint and a grounded tone, co-produced with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. “The packaging of this film in terms of the thriller and the LGBT themes put together” accounts for its global reach, she says.
Kapoor Sheikh notes that the move toward emerging voices has been intentional from the beginning, and the track record spans several years and genres. The platform has worked with first- and second-time directors including Honey Trehan (“Raat Akeli Hai”), Aditya Nimbalkar (“Sector 36”), Arjun Varain Singh (“Kho Gaye Hum Kahan”), Vivek Soni (“Meenakshi Sundareshwar,” “Aap Jaisa Koi”) and Yashowardhan Mishra, whose “Kathal: A Jackfruit Mystery” became the first Netflix India film to win the Indian National Film Award for best Hindi-language film. The process, she says, now reaches beyond Mumbai to encompass writers turning directors and regional talent moving across language lines. “The hunger that comes from new voices becomes very important to keep the flywheel going,” she says.
On the Tamil-language side, “Made in Korea” star Priyanka Mohan – whose international profile grew substantially with the film’s extended chart run – says the scale of the response has taken time to absorb. “It’s still sinking in that a simple Tamil story is resonating with audiences around the world,” she tells Variety.
The current chart performance – which also includes “Border 2” and “Dhurandhar” among Indian titles on the list in recent weeks – reflects what Kapoor Sheikh describes as a deliberate balance between emerging voices and established ones, with the ratio shifting over time. “You’re going to see a lot of interesting writers that make the move” to directing, she says, alongside regional filmmakers crossing into broader markets. The goal, in her framing, is a creative ecosystem fluid enough to hold both the first-time director and the returning marquee-name auteur – and in the current Global Top 10, that balance is visible in real time.
