Goldmines: The Biggest Indian Streamer You’ve Never Heard Of
This edition of Streamlined is taking a quick look at Goldmines Telefilms, an Indian film distributor with a YouTube channel where single movies can rack up hundreds of millions of views, putting the SVOD streamers like Netflix, Prime Video and JioHotstar somewhat in the shade. I’d never heard of this company, but was told about it by Ormax Media CEO Shailesh Kapoor when we met a few weeks back in Mumbai (I’ve written another more general piece about Indian box office in 2025 for Deadline).
I'm currently working out of Kochi in the South Indian state of Kerala, one of most genteel Indian cities I’ve ever visited, where I’ve come to learn more about the Malayalam film industry. Despite being a relatively small state, Kerala is routinely delivering films that beat Hindi, Tamil and Telugu blockbusters to land in India’s year-end top 15. I’m here to find out why – more on that soon – and also working on updates to the Streamlined Guides to the Philippines and Indonesia, and starting work on the first Streamlined Guide to Thailand. I’m ploughing through a deluge of interviews, research and data, so please bear with me.
Why Goldmines Telefilms Is Literally A Gold Mine
Founded by producer Manish Shah, this Mumbai-based company acquires and dubs South Indian films – from stars including Rajinikanth, Allu Arjun and Jr NTR – into north Indian languages Hindi, Bhojpuri and Bengali for distribution across television, satellite channels and digital platforms, including YouTube.
Most of the content is action movies aimed at mass audiences in smaller cities and rural areas – no fancy multiplex movies made for the urban elites on these channels. But the crazy success of Goldmines' YouTube channel reveals where the real mass market lies in India. The channel currently has 109 million subscribers, while the Hindi dubbed versions of Kannada-language blockbuster K.G.F. and its sequel together have more than a billion views.
In contrast, the top-rated SVOD series in India last year – Jio Hotstar’s Special Ops Season 2 – racked up 29.6 million views, according to Ormax Media data, while Prime Video’s top show, The Family Man Season 3, pulled in 24.6 million views, and Netflix’s biggest hit, Ba***ds Of Bollywood, had 16.7 million views. Prime Video recently made a smart move by introducing the Goldmines Play streaming service as an add-on subscription at a monthly price of 43c (INR 39).
