The platform currently hosts 414,000 Indian titles — spanning films, TV shows, shorts, podcasts, and music videos — and counts 61,000 movies across 15+ Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Odia, Bhojpuri, Assamese, Rajasthani, Konkani, and Haryanvi.
While IMDb’s global user base stands at 250 million, it did not disclose India-specific numbers.
“We have very compelling reasons to focus on India. First, it is probably the most prolific entertainment industry in the world, producing content across 15 different languages,” said Patodia.
“Now is the time when more democratized access to talent can really enable the kind of cross-collaboration that we think will unlock scale,” she added.
Patodia explained that IMDb aims to act as a technology connector between professionals across industries — say, a producer sitting in Mumbai looking for a writer in the Tamil industry, or looking to cast a specific actor for a role.
“That diversity is a very important reason for us to focus on India,” she noted.
Ratings, lists, and local love
Patodia said IMDb’s Indian users have a distinct appetite for ratings and curated lists, making them stand out globally. Beyond the global IMDb Top 250 lists, India is the only market with its own individual rankings for top movies, shows, and celebrities.
Further, linguistic diversity shapes user behaviour. Consumers may be comfortable using the website in English but are looking for information around content originally made in multiple languages, she said.
Charting 25 years of Indian cinema
Last month, IMDb released 25 Years of Indian Cinema (2000–2025) — a data-led report mapping the Indian film industry’s evolution over the past quarter century.
The report examined the top five most popular Indian movies released each year between 1 January 2000, and 31 August 2025. These 130 movies collectively account for more than 9.1 million IMDb user ratings, an average of over 70,000 per movie, the report said.
After Shah Rukh Khan at 20, Hrithik Roshan and Aamir Khan are tied with 11 movies each out of the 130 analysed in the report, followed by Deepika Padukone with 10, Ajay Devgn with seven, and Amitabh Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Rani Mukerji with six movies each.
3 Idiots is the most popular Indian movie worldwide on IMDb, with 468,000 IMDb user ratings, and 8.4 aggregate rating. Directors like Lokesh Kanagaraj and S.S. Rajamouli, with four titles each in the report, are leading the charge in making movies that transcend regional boundaries. Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 12th Fail (2023), stands out as the only movie by a Hindi filmmaker to break into the top 10 most popular Indian movies in southern states in the last five years.
Tackling review manipulation
To be sure, Indian film industries have often faced allegations of manipulating ratings and reviews on platforms such as IMDb through bots or paid campaigns.
On her part, Patodia claimed the rating for titles on the platform is a weighted, non-static average that keeps evolving and the company is cognizant of the different forms of abuse.
“These ratings are important for high content or concept films, as we call them, to attract audiences, since they rely on genuine critic reviews, word-of-mouth and ratings. But organic audience appreciation takes time to grow and may not reflect in these IMDb ratings in a hurry. Having said that, audiences now can sense when ratings and reviews are manipulated and when they are organic and genuine,” film producer Shariq Patel said.
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