Hotstar and Jiocinema, two widely used video flow applications in India, have merged into Jiohotstar.
JIOSTAR, a consortium between Reliance owned by Viacom18 and Star India, said on Friday that it had incorporated Jiocinema’s huge content library into a refreshed version of Disney’s Hotstar platform.
The merged application, living in Friday’s Local India Time, will include hundreds of thousands of local content, more than 100 TV channels as well as Disney TV shows, Warner Bros, HBO, NBCuniversal and Paramount. Jiohotstar aims to reach more than 500 million users in the country.
Jiohotstar, which offers content in 19 languages and produces 30,000 hours of television programming annually, has a subscription plans starting at ₹ $ 149 ($ 1.71) for three months (advertised by ads) and ₹ 299 ($ 3.45) per per month for experience without ads. The advertising -free tier allows simultaneously viewing to four screens at the same time, while the cheapest model supported by ads limits that on one screen.
The integration follows the merger of Reliance’s $ 8.5 billion with Walt Disney Indian assets last year, which created a consortium that controls about 85% of India’s flow market and half of television.
“Entertainment is no longer a privilege, but a shared experience for everyone,” said Kiran Mani, a digital chief executive of Jiostar. The team said that existing Jiocinema subscribers would go to Jiohotstar as soon as their current subscriptions end.
The merger brings India’s most valuable sports rights under a platform, including cricket properties, such as the Indian Premier League and the International Cricket Council Tournaments, alongside the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA World Cup.
The implementation of JIOCINEMA will be gradually abolished after the end of the subscriptions of existing customers. Jiocinema subscribers will be able to “flawless” and create Jiohotstar subscriptions, the company told TechCrunch.
The integration reflects the difficulties faced by foreign media groups in the market sensitive to India. Netflix and Amazon Prime also fought to increase subscriptions, despite large investments in local content.
Amazon, which has acquired the MX Player last year, is aggressively expanding the new streaming video app with more than 100 original shows and films this year. The MX Player was the third most popular streaming video app in December, just behind Hotstar and Jiocinema, according to Sensor Tower.
