JioHotstar Bets Big On South Storytelling As Connected TV Surges

Sushant Sreeram began by speaking about the scale that JioHotstar has achieved in a short period. “Programming and the capabilities that we are building as a technology platform are allowing for access and ease across the length and breadth of the country,” he said. He emphasised the platform’s reach and added, “We are not just a phenomenon or a platform or a brand that is for some people or some parts of India. We have consumers and audiences from 100% of the people in this country tuning in regularly to the platform.”

Sreeram highlighted one of the most significant behavioural shifts the company has recorded. “A big shift that we have begun to see and this is even more pronounced in South is the significant acceleration of adoption of connected TV.” He added that this trend has exceeded expectations. “This adoption specifically in South India across the five states has actually been faster than we had anticipated. We actually see close to 40–45% of our South consumption of JioHotstar happen across connected TV devices.”

Explaining how families are driving this surge, he said, “This explosion of connected TV consumption which is really about family oriented consumption obviously supported by the diversity of our programming has seen a phenomenal rise especially in South India.” With the app now accessible almost everywhere, Sreeram noted, “The JioHotstar app has a reach of almost 99% of all shipments that happen today and almost 85 million devices across the length and the breadth of this country have the app actively being used.”

He added that the brand recognition the platform has built has been particularly encouraging. “It is especially heartening that in a relatively short span of time we have actually been able to not just put together an entertainment catalog, a live sports offering, a technology platform but we have been able to communicate this effectively enough and bring audiences love and affection into being the most recalled OTT platform in this country today,” he said. Citing independent metrics, he added, “JioHotstar is the most top of mind recall OTT platform in the country ahead of every digital destination.”

Calling these ‘great early signs’, Sreeram said it had only been ten months since the platform’s transition but the momentum was clear. Krishnan Kutty elaborated on the South market.

Krishnan Kutty began by saying, “It’s been an extremely interesting 10 months and what we have been able to see has really excited us about what the possibilities are ahead.” He described the South as a creative powerhouse that drives trends instead of following them. “Whether you call it Kollywood, Tollywood, Sandalwood or Mollywood, it really is a creative ecosystem which is reverberating across the country,” he said. “The South doesn’t really follow trends, it creates them.”

Kutty added that the strength of South storytelling lies in its rootedness. “Creators in the South put a lot of focus on authenticity and cultural rootedness,” he said, adding, “The more culturally rooted the story is, the more global it turns out to be.” Giving examples of what is working on the platform, he highlighted the Tamil series ‘Heartbeat’. “Heartbeat as a show has got more than 100 million hours of consumption,” he said, calling it an unprecedented number. He spoke about how both large films and intimate stories from the South have travelled. “Movies like Lokah, Tourist Family are really small personal stories, but the love they have got across the country has been tremendous.”

Kutty described reality show Bigg Boss as a category-defining driver for JioHotstar. “Big Boss is a phenomena, it is probably a phenomenon which is only exceeded by IPL,” he said. “Big Boss alone from a scale and audience perspective is bigger than any other platform in the South from a streaming perspective.”

He highlighted how South content is travelling within India. Apparently 6 PIN codes in the country haven’t got South content over the last few months. They also pointed to cross-regional hits such as ‘Chutney Sambar’ in Telugu and ‘Kerala Crime Files’ in Maharashtra and Delhi.

On audience behaviour, he said, “Consumers in the South spend 70% more time on our platform than consumers across the rest of the country.” He added that they watch “50% more genres” and “20% more titles” than the rest of India. “Consumers are telling us that they have an appetite for content and they are looking for more,” he said.

Kutty said the company has already partnered with over 500 creators across scripted, non-scripted and film formats. “People are thinking very, very disruptively and JioHotstar remains the most committed platform in the region. Of all the original content made in the South, 75% of it has been commissioned by Jio Hotstar,” he said.

He reinforced the company’s long-term investment. “We are committed to spending 4,000 crores in this market over the last five years,” he said. The company has also partnered with the Government of Tamil Nadu to build and strengthen the creative ecosystem through labs, internships and government-driven programs.