India remains one of the most distinct major subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) markets globally, given the wide range of local or regional players that exceed the subscriber counts of the typical market leaders Netflix and Amazon. With Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema now merged into JioHotstar, the Indian SVoD market has a player that can offer subscribers notable volumes of both the ever-popular local content and titles from several major US studios. Ampere’s SVoD catalogue tracking highlights how strong the content offering of the combined entity is.

The new JioHotstar is one of the largest SVoD catalogues in the market, with over 14k movies and TV seasons available to subscribers upon launch on February 14^th 2025. Locally-produced titles make up over 60% of the VoD library, including TV shows from the Star and Colors TV networks, bringing together the local content advantage that both JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar exhibited even before the merger.

Indian audiences continue to be passionate about entertainment made locally, especially when it comes to movies:  62% of our Indian respondents say they watch locally-produced movies ‘very often’ – the highest share among the over 30 markets Ampere surveys. The library includes popular titles such as Hanu-Man, the Baahubali films, and TV show Bigg Boss.

However, unlike many other local players, JioHotstar also has an advantage in catering to consumers' large appetite for Hollywood movies - a key area to compete with Netflix. While not as strong as the local movie preference, the proportion of Indian survey respondents watching Hollywood movies ‘very often’ is 41%. JioHotstar brings together valuable Disney assets (particularly across the Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars properties) as well as the key distribution deals JioCinema already had with Universal (Oppenheimer, Despicable Me 4), Warner Bros. Discovery (Harry Potter, The Dark Knight) and Paramount (Mission: Impossible, Transformers). JioCinema also brings with it popular US TV from familiar brands such as HBO, Showtime and Nickelodeon.

Aside from film and TV, sport is also very important to Indian consumers. JioHotstar caters to fans of three of India's favourite sports (cricket, soccer and tennis) through its rights to show IPL cricket, Premier League soccer and Wimbledon. Of these three tournaments, the IPL is the most significant, not only because cricket is by far India’s most popular sport (enjoyed by 43% of survey respondents) but also because cricket was the key reason for Disney+ Hotstar’s growth, evidenced by its large subscription loss in 2023 when it lost the IPL streaming rights to Viacom18’s JioCinema.

The combination of local content, Hollywood movies and popular sports events makes the new entity a formidable player in India’s evolving SVoD market.