Reliance Industries may retain Disney+Hotstar as the sole streaming platform after the merger of Star India and Viacom18. The Economic Times report quoted sources as saying that JioCinema is going to be merged with Disney + Hotstar. After this, all types of content can be seen on the joint platform.
How many downloads of Disney+ Hotstar
Let us tell you that Disney+ Hotstar, the streaming service owned by Walt Disney’s Star India, has more than 500 million downloads on Google Play Store, while JioCinema has 100 million downloads. JioCinema is owned by Reliance Industries. According to Reliance’s annual report, JioCinema reached an average of 225 million monthly users. In contrast, Disney + Hotstar had 333 million monthly active users in Q4 2023. Earlier, Reliance-controlled Viacom18 had merged its various OTT platforms with JioCinema. These were the platforms of Voot brand.
The government had given approval
Recently, the government has approved the transfer of licenses related to non-news and current affairs TV channels of the media units of billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries to Star India. Now both the parties are in the final stages of merger and are making some adjustments in their business as per the CCI directions.
NCLT has also given approval
On August 30, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) had approved the plan of merger of Viacom18 Media and Digital18 Media, which owns the media and entertainment assets of Reliance Industries, with Star India. Let us tell you that the merger of the media assets of Reliance Industries and The Walt Disney Company will create the country’s largest media group, whose valuation will be more than Rs 70,000 crore.
Reliance Industries has also agreed to invest about Rs 11,500 crore in a joint venture to take on rivals like Netflix and Japan’s Sony. Nita Ambani, wife of RIL Chairman Mukesh Ambani, will head the joint venture, while Uday Shankar will be its vice-chairperson.
