Ambanis to Shut Down Jio Cinema
In february of this year, a significant $8.5 billion agreement in the indian over-the-top (OTT) market was reached between reliance and Walt Disney's media properties in India, Viacom 18 and Star India, respectively. Following this merger, it was revealed that Disney+ Hotstar, an indian over-the-top platform, will be combined with jio Cinema, a reliance company.
However, the most recent sources state that reliance, owned by the Ambani family, has merged jio Cinema with Hotstar in order to maintain Hotstar as its main streaming service. The merged company would have a single, unified OTT platform as a result of this transaction. According to the source, "Jio Hotstar" would be the name of this merged OTT platform.
According to rumors, the Ambanis chose to combine jio Cinema with Hotstar because of the latter's better technology. At first, it was said that Hotstar will solely provide sports-related material, such as the indian Premier League (IPL), but more recent sources indicate that the two sites will be fully combined into one. After jio Cinema and Hotstar unite, Hotstar will have a large subscriber base and be the largest OTT platform in the nation. jio Hotstar is anticipated to take over the indian streaming market as jio offers free OTT services with certain cell and WiFi contracts.