JioHotstar has officially stepped outside India for the first time, launching its streaming service in the United Kingdom, Canada and Singapore on September 2. The move marks the biggest strategic shift yet for the Reliance-backed platform, which is best known domestically for cricket, Bollywood blockbusters and an enormous regional-language catalogue and is now looking to convert that scale into a global business built around the South Asian diaspora.
A Platform Built on Scale
The numbers behind the launch are hard to ignore. JioHotstar will bring more than 160,000 hours of content to the three new markets, spread across 12-plus languages and covering films, television, regional programming, non-fiction, kids’ content and anime. The company has also committed to adding upward of 30,000 hours of fresh content every year in these markets a signal that this isn’t a one-time content dump but an ongoing investment.
That international library is a fraction of what JioHotstar offers at home. In India, the platform commands an average monthly user base of roughly 500 million and a catalogue exceeding 300,000 hours across 19 languages numbers that dwarf most global streaming rivals and underline just how much runway JioHotstar has to keep exporting content abroad.
Out With Hotstar, In With JioHotstar
For existing subscribers in the UK, Canada and Singapore, the change is more than cosmetic. Hotstar the brand JioHotstar is replacing will effectively be retired in these three markets. Existing login credentials carry over automatically, and current subscriptions convert into the equivalent JioHotstar tier without any action required from users.
One notable catch: monthly subscription plans are being phased out for new sign-ups. Going forward, the platform is only offering quarterly and annual plans in these markets, priced as follows:
- United Kingdom: £19.99 per quarter, £69.99 annually
- Canada: C$19.99 per quarter, C$49.99 annually
- Singapore: S$29.98 per quarter, S$69.98 annually
UK subscribers already on legacy monthly plans can keep them as long as auto-renewal stays active, but that option won’t be available to new customers anywhere.
It’s also worth noting what’s not included at launch: live sports, including marquee properties like the IPL, are absent from the international rollout due to broadcasting rights restrictions a reminder that even with a deep content library, geography still shapes what audiences abroad can access.
Why Now, and Why These Three Markets
The UK, Canada and Singapore are not random choices. All three have large, well-established South Asian communities with strong ties to Indian entertainment, making them a natural first step before JioHotstar potentially expands further afield.
Amit Malhotra, Head of International Business at JioStar, framed the move as less about content volume and more about experience:
“Streaming has spent the last decade competing on the size of its catalogue,” Malhotra said. “We believe the bigger opportunity now is to reimagine how audiences experience entertainment not just what they watch, but how they discover, engage with and shape the experience in real time.”
Malhotra also pointed to a broader ambition beyond the diaspora audience itself, positioning the platform as a play for global viewers with an appetite for non-Western content. He noted that South Asian audiences have a deep, multi-generational connection to Indian entertainment, while global audiences more broadly are increasingly drawn to stories and cultures beyond their own describing the opportunity as building for an underserved global audience rather than simply exporting an Indian service into new markets.
The Bigger Picture
JioHotstar is owned by JioStar, the joint venture formed after Reliance’s Viacom18 and Disney’s Star India merged their streaming and broadcast operations a deal that consolidated two of India’s biggest entertainment businesses under one roof. That merger gave JioHotstar the combined heft of Disney’s international content relationships and Reliance’s dominant position in the Indian market, resources it now appears ready to deploy overseas.
The international launch also arrives alongside a broader repositioning: personalised recommendations, interactive features and flexible subscription structures suggest JioHotstar wants to be seen less as a repository of Indian content and more as a modern, product-led streaming platform competing on user experience, not just catalogue size.
Whether that pitch resonates will depend on execution particularly the absence of live sports at launch, a category that has historically been a major driver of Hotstar’s engagement in India. But with a five-hundred-million-user base at home and a content pipeline few competitors can match, JioHotstar’s move into the UK, Canada and Singapore looks less like a cautious pilot and more like the opening chapter of a genuine global ambition.
