Mukesh Ambani’s streaming empire is making its biggest international push yet, taking JioHotstar beyond India and directly into some of the world’s largest Indian diaspora markets.
The platform, operated by JioStar, officially launched in the United Kingdom, Canada and Singapore on September 2, replacing the existing Hotstar service in those markets.
The expansion gives Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Disney, which jointly own JioStar, a new opportunity to turn India’s enormous appetite for digital entertainment into a global subscription business.
But there is a major difference between JioHotstar’s international debut and the service that has become a streaming powerhouse in India.
There is no live sports at launch.
That means the international version arrives without some of the cricket properties that have helped make JioHotstar one of the world’s largest streaming platforms in India, including the Indian Premier League.
Instead, JioHotstar is betting on something different: Indian movies, television, regional-language programming, reality shows, originals and the emotional connection between the Indian diaspora and entertainment from home.
JioHotstar Is Going After a Global Indian Audience
JioStar says its international strategy is aimed first at South Asian audiences living abroad, while also seeking viewers around the world who are interested in Indian stories and multilingual entertainment.
The launch markets were chosen in part because of their large Indian and South Asian populations.
India’s overseas diaspora numbers more than 37 million, according to Indian government data cited by The Straits Times and The Economic Times.
Canada has roughly 3.2 million people of Indian origin, the UK about 1.3 million, and Singapore around 483,000 overseas Indians, according to the reports.
Those numbers give JioHotstar a potentially large addressable audience before it even begins expanding into additional countries.
And the company is not limiting itself strictly to people who were born in India.
Its strategy is to use Indian entertainment as a gateway to a broader global audience interested in different languages, cultures and stories.
JioStar’s international business chief Amit Malhotra said the company’s goal is not simply to export an Indian streaming service but to build for what it describes as an underserved global audience.
More Than 160,000 Hours of Indian Entertainment
JioHotstar launched internationally with more than 160,000 hours of entertainment across more than 12 Asian languages.
The catalogue includes films, television programs, originals, regional programming, reality shows, children’s entertainment and anime.
The platform is also promising to add more than 30,000 hours of new content every year.
Among the programming available internationally are titles such as:
- Asur
- Special Ops
- Criminal Justice
- Heartbeat
- Resort
- 12th Fail
- Chhichhore
- Dhurandhar
- Kesari Chapter 2
- Kill
The service also includes programming from JioStar television networks such as Star Plus, Colors, Star Vijay, Asianet, Star Jalsha and Star Pravah.
For audiences accustomed to watching Indian television through Hotstar, the transition is designed to be relatively straightforward.
Existing subscribers in the three markets can use their existing credentials and move to equivalent JioHotstar plans, according to the company.
Bigg Boss Could Become the Global Hook
One of the most important pieces of JioHotstar’s international strategy is Bigg Boss.
The long-running reality franchise has evolved from a Hindi-language television program into a multilingual entertainment property.
International viewers in the UK, Canada and Singapore can participate through live voting across editions of the show.
Subscribers in the UK and Canada also get access to a 24-hour live feed, while Canadian viewers can watch Bigg Boss Hindi seven days before its television broadcast.
That interactive element is significant.
Instead of simply asking overseas audiences to watch Indian programming, JioHotstar is attempting to make them active participants.
The company is also bringing in Bollywood names.
Anil Kapoor, who previously hosted Bigg Boss OTT, is fronting a new game-show format called India Ka Top 1 Percent, which will be available in Canada and Singapore.
The Biggest Surprise: No Cricket
For a platform that has built enormous scale in India partly through sports, the international strategy is notable for what it doesn’t include.
JioHotstar’s global launch does not include live sports.
That means overseas subscribers will not initially get the cricket-heavy proposition that has driven massive audiences for JioHotstar in India.
TechCrunch reported that JioStar attributed the absence to existing content agreements but did not rule out sports being added in the future.
This creates a fundamentally different business proposition.
In India, sports can generate enormous spikes in engagement and concurrent viewing.
Internationally, JioHotstar is instead trying to establish itself as a premium Indian entertainment destination.
The question is whether movies, television and reality programming can generate the same level of habitual engagement without cricket.
The Platform Already Has Enormous Scale in India
JioHotstar is not entering international markets as an untested streaming startup.
It is already one of the world’s largest streaming services.
JioStar says the platform has more than 500 million monthly average users in India, while Reliance executives previously reported hundreds of millions of monthly active users and record-breaking sports audiences.
In June, Reliance Jio chairman Akash Ambani said JioHotstar averaged 451 million monthly active users during fiscal 2026.
He also said IPL 2026 reached more than 700 million viewers on the platform, while JioHotstar recorded 72.5 million concurrent viewers during the T20 World Cup.
Those figures illustrate the enormous domestic scale that Ambani’s media operation is now attempting to translate into overseas markets.
But international subscriptions are a different business.
A massive Indian audience does not automatically translate into millions of paying customers abroad.
The Pricing Is Much Higher Outside India
That difference becomes especially obvious when comparing prices.
In India, JioHotstar’s entry-level subscriptions are priced at a fraction of what the service costs overseas.
Internationally, JioHotstar launched with the following pricing:
| Market | Quarterly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| UK | £19.99 | £69.99 |
| Canada | C$19.99 | C$49.99 |
| Singapore | S$29.98 | S$69.98 |
The company introduced quarterly plans alongside annual subscriptions in all three markets.
The pricing is designed to give the company a higher-value subscription base outside India.
But that also puts JioHotstar into direct competition with established streaming platforms that already have deep libraries and strong brand recognition.
Disney Gives JioHotstar a Complicated Global Connection
The international expansion also highlights the unusual structure behind JioHotstar.
JioStar was created through the combination of Reliance’s media assets and Disney’s Indian operations.
The resulting joint venture brought together JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar in India, creating JioHotstar as the combined streaming platform.
That merger gave Reliance access to an enormous entertainment library and technology infrastructure while Disney retained a major role in the media venture.
But the global version does not simply reproduce Disney’s entire streaming catalogue.
The Straits Times reported that Hollywood programming from Disney and HBO Max that is licensed for India is not automatically available on the international JioHotstar service because of existing licensing arrangements.
That makes the international offering much more focused on Indian and South Asian entertainment.
AI and Personalization Are Part of the Pitch
JioHotstar is also trying to differentiate itself through technology.
The company says the platform uses personalized recommendations and other technology designed to make content discovery easier across a huge multilingual catalogue.
That matters because 160,000 hours of programming can become a problem as easily as an advantage.
The more content a platform offers, the harder it can become for viewers to decide what to watch.
JioStar is therefore emphasizing personalization, language options and interactive features alongside the size of its catalogue.
The service supports subtitles and dubbing across more than a dozen Asian languages, including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada and Marathi.
Singapore Could Be a Particularly Interesting Test
Singapore is one of the smallest of the three launch markets by population, but its demographic profile makes it strategically important.
The country has a substantial Indian-origin population and a broader South Asian community.
It also has high internet penetration and a mature subscription-streaming market.
That makes Singapore a useful test of whether JioHotstar’s proposition can work outside India’s price-sensitive mass market.
Canada and the UK provide larger diaspora populations.
Together, the three markets allow JioStar to test different audience environments before potentially moving into additional countries.
The U.S. Is Not Part of This First Wave
One notable omission from the international launch is the United States.
Hotstar previously operated as a standalone service in the U.S. before shutting down there in 2021.
JioHotstar’s current international rollout instead begins with the UK, Canada and Singapore, with the company indicating that additional overseas markets could follow.
The absence of the U.S. does not necessarily mean the market is off-limits permanently.
Instead, JioStar appears to be using the first three markets to establish the international model before potentially expanding further.
Why the Diaspora Strategy Makes Business Sense
For streaming companies, diaspora audiences can be particularly valuable because cultural familiarity can create a strong reason to subscribe.
A viewer living thousands of kilometers from India may still want to watch the same television programs, movies and reality shows being discussed by family members back home.
That creates an emotional connection that general-purpose global streaming platforms cannot always replicate.
JioHotstar is essentially betting that Indian entertainment can travel with the Indian diaspora.
But the opportunity extends beyond first-generation immigrants.
Indian-language entertainment can also appeal to second- and third-generation families, mixed households and non-Indian viewers interested in Bollywood, regional cinema and South Asian culture.
That is why JioStar says it wants to serve both the diaspora and a broader global audience.
The Bigger Ambani Streaming Bet
The international rollout represents a significant change in ambition.
Reliance is no longer building JioHotstar solely as India’s giant streaming destination.
It is testing whether an Indian-born entertainment platform can become an international brand.
That is a much harder challenge.
Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and other global services already compete for consumers’ attention in the same markets.
JioHotstar’s advantage is its deep connection to Indian entertainment and a potentially large built-in diaspora audience.
Its disadvantage is that the international service initially lacks the cricket engine that has helped drive its extraordinary scale in India.
That makes the next phase of the experiment particularly important.
If JioHotstar can convert even a fraction of India’s global diaspora into paying subscribers, Ambani’s streaming business could gain a new source of international revenue.
But if viewers consider the service incomplete without live cricket, the company may eventually need to rethink what its global product should look like.
For now, the strategy is clear:
Take India’s entertainment powerhouse abroad, start with the diaspora, build the subscription base — and see how far JioHotstar can travel without the sport that made it a giant at home.
