JioStar, India's largest media company, is fully executing its market leadership strategy in the Indian OTT market with the official launch of its streaming platform, JioHotstar.
Reliance Industries, an Indian traditional media company, merged with Disney in November 2024 to form India's largest media company, JioStar, which launched its streaming platform JioHotstar last Friday (February 14). This makes JioStar the largest OTT platform in India with over 500 million users, following the merger of Reliance Industries' Jiocinema and Disney's Disney+Hotstar.

The birth of JioHotstar

Last November, India's entertainment industry reached a new inflection point with the historic merger of Disney's Star India and Viacom18's Reliance. It was a merger between a traditional Indian media company and a global media company to pre-empt the Indian streaming market. In particular, the deal made Disney+Hotstar, the number one streaming service in India, the second largest shareholder.

JioStar's largest shareholder is Viacom18 (46.82%), but since Viacom18's largest shareholder is Reliance Industries (70.49%), JioStar is ultimately controlled by Reliance Industries.
The merger created JioStar, a media giant with a market value of about $8.5 billion, making it a key platform for dominating the Indian media market.
The mega-merger between Disney and Reliance was approved in August last year after a review by the Competition Commission of India(CCI). While competition concerns were raised during the review process, the CCI ultimately approved the merger due to the company's emphasis on a "consumer-centric" strategy. "The CCI has found that there are no anti-trust issues and that there will be significant consumer benefits," said Sanjog Gupta, CEO(Sports)

Key strategies of JioHotstar

JioHotstar has evolved into a comprehensive streaming platform offering a variety of content including sports, movies, original series and reality shows in 19 languages. In particular, with Viacom18 having secured the rights to broadcast cricket matches, a popular sport in India, and the Indian Premier League(IPL) (2023-2027), JioHotstar is well positioned to become the premier streaming platform in India.

JioHotstar has chosen a hybrid model, offering basic content for free while also offering a premium plan. The subscription plan starts at 149 rupees (about $1.70), and certain content is available only to paid subscribers.

① Localization strategy for sports broadcasting: Multilingual Sports Broadcasting

JioHotstar has introduced a multilingual, customized broadcasting system for sports content.
Sanjog Gupta, CEO of JioStar Sports, said that the EPL(English Premier League) is watched more in Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam than in English, and the IPL(Indian Premier League) and the Cricket World Cup have higher viewership in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu than in English.

As a result, JioHotstar has chosen a strategy that increases the immersion of local fans by providing different broadcast times and narratives for each language, rather than a simple multilingual translation method.

② Strengthening movies and regional content

JioHotstar will release 23 original series every month and one major content every month. It also plans to release one or two movies per quarter.
In addition, JioHotstar plans to produce 40-50 local original content to target the South Indian market.
According to Variety, South Indian films (Telugu and Tamil) will account for 45% of the total Indian film market share by 2024. It is also becoming a growing content production base in India, accounting for six of the top ten Indian box office grosses, including the first and second spots. JioHotstar also plans to increase the amount of regional language content from 500 hours last year to 1,100 hours this year.

③ Stable global supply of content (Disney)

With Disney as its second largest shareholder, JioStar has secured a stable supply of Disney's Hollywood content (Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, etc.). In addition, it is reported that it will also provide content from major studios such as Warner Bros., HBO, NBCUniversal and Paramount. With this, JioStar plans to overwhelm Amazon's MX Player, which has significantly strengthened its lineup this year and is targeting the Indian market, with its content.

According to JustWatch, Disney+ Hotstar's market share in the 4Q of 2024 fell 2% from the previous quarter to 23%. Since last year, the number of cricket matches aired has been steadily declining. If JioHotstar has been able to secure a stable supply of content from Disney, Disney has secured a stable source of content in the Indian market through JioHotstar.

④ JioHotstar Expands into the Indian Diaspora Market

India has the largest domestic market in the world with more than 1.4 billion people, making it an important strategic base for global media companies. In addition, JioHotstar is pursuing a strategy to expand its services beyond the Indian market to the global Indian diaspora.

According to the Ministry of External Affairs of India, the total number of overseas Indians worldwide as of May 2024 was approximately 35.42 million, of which approximately 15.85 million were Non-Resident Indians(NRIs) and approximately 19.57 million were Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs).

"JioStar will provide content that is competitive in the global market, especially in South India," said Kiran Mani, CEO of Digital. "We are now ready to light up India's 1 billion screens."

JioStar's launch of JioHotstar can be seen as a strategic move by a local Indian company to strengthen its dominance in the Indian OTT market by partnering with the global Disney. JioHotstar's vast library of sports, movies, original and premium content from global studios offers unparalleled content accessibility compared to competitors like Netflix and Amazon.

In particular, JioHotstar is expected to expand its influence beyond the Indian market and onto the global stage through various strategies, including a localization strategy for sports broadcasts, strengthening regional content to target the South Indian market, securing global content through a tie-up with Disney, and expanding the global Indian diaspora market.

As competition between global media companies and local Indian media companies intensifies in the world's largest OTT market, India, it will be interesting to see if JioHotstar can establish itself as the central hub of the Indian media industry.