Indian streaming giant JioHotstar is scaling its South India operations following dramatic audience growth over the past 10 months, with executives detailing the strategic rationale behind the platform’s INR4,000 crore ($445 million) content investment unveiled on Tuesday in Chennai.
Krishnan Kutty, head of entertainment for JioHotstar’s South cluster, and Sushant Sreeram, chief marketing officer and head of SVOD business at JioStar, spoke about the behavioral shifts that convinced the platform to significantly expand its regional programming slate.
The South region – comprising the Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam languages – now accounts for approximately 35% of entertainment watch time and nearly 25% of total entertainment viewership on JioHotstar, according to Kutty. Since the platform’s launch, video views have grown close to 70% while watch time has increased by approximately 160%.
“Over the last 10 months we have seen sustained behavior shifts across the South,” Kutty says. “Viewers in these markets also spend meaningfully more time with us. They watch roughly 70% more minutes than the national average, explore around 20% more titles and sample a wider range of genres.”
Connected TV adoption has particularly strengthened viewing patterns, with close to 45% of viewing in the South now occurring on large screens. The platform currently reaches approximately 400 million users monthly.
The newly announced slate leans heavily on returning seasons, reflecting audience engagement patterns that have emerged as a key performance indicator for the platform. Kutty cited “Heartbeat” as a prime example, noting the series has crossed 100 million hours of watch time and become the biggest long-running JioHotstar special in its category.
“When audiences connect deeply with a story world, they do not treat it as a one-time viewing experience,” Kutty explains. “That behavior has become one of the strongest signals across the last year.”
The platform has observed similar patterns with “Save the Tigers,” “Kerala Crime Files” and “Police Police,” where returning seasons generate both anticipation and repeat viewing. According to Kutty, this consistency matters significantly in a subscription environment, driving retention and strengthening viewing habits.
“The more familiar and emotionally resonant the world becomes, the stronger the renewal intent,” he says. “That is why long-running storytelling is not only a creative choice — it is now a core structural pillar of how the slate is being built.”
The platform is also deepening investment in talent-driven originals, including the recently announced “Kaattaan” starring Vijay Sethupathi and “Pharma” featuring Nivin Pauly. Kutty positioned these projects as a natural evolution rather than a strategic pivot.
“Our starting point is always the story,” Kutty says. “When a narrative demands a certain emotional scale or storytelling ambition, pairing it with established talent helps it land with immediacy and travel faster across markets.”
With the platform now serving hundreds of millions of users and more than 200 million paid subscribers, Kutty argues there is room for vision-driven, marquee originals that justify scale. He characterizes working with leading talent as a natural next step in building stories that feel distinctive, premium and exportable while staying rooted in local creative strength.
The expanded slate spans crime, legal drama, relationship stories, youth titles and experimental genres. Kutty describes the commissioning approach as grounding the slate in what South audiences consistently value while creating space for ideas that signal where their tastes are heading.
“The South viewer today is digital first, highly discerning and confident in engaging with new storytelling styles culturally rooted,” he says. “That gives us room to pair familiar formats with worlds that push creative boundaries.”
According to Kutty, approximately 75% of this year’s South originals have chosen JioHotstar as their home.
“The stories here are deeply authentic, drawn from lived experiences, genuine emotions, and strong cultural identities,” Kutty says. “Time and again, we see that the most rooted stories often become the most universal.”
The rise of connected TV viewing in the South is directly influencing commissioning decisions, according to Kutty. CTV households show higher repeat viewing and longer session times compared to mobile-only users, reintroducing shared living-room viewing alongside mobile-first digital consumption.
“We are now assessing whether a story has the depth, pacing and world building to sustain longer-format viewing and whether it has multi-season potential, because longer arcs and returning formats are performing strongly in CTV households,” Kutty explains.
However, mobile continues to drive everyday engagement, requiring stories to remain accessible, immediate and easy to enter. Commissioning now balances both behaviors, looking for concepts that can operate across screens — premium enough for the big screen and personal enough for the phone, according to Kutty.
From a subscription and marketing perspective, Sreeram attributes the South region’s acceleration to clear shifts in audience behavior. The region’s viewers are watching more, exploring more genres and sampling across languages at significantly higher rates.
“South users also spend nearly 70% more time on the platform compared to the rest of India, which has been a strong driver of sustained subscription growth,” Sreeram says.
A key factor driving subscription momentum is how South stories are traveling across the country, with titles breaking out well beyond their home markets.
“As more titles break out, we see a clear flywheel where wider discovery leads to higher engagement which, in turn, strengthens subscription momentum,” Sreeram explains.
The platform’s 2025 strategy is focused on consistency, discovery and scale in response to evolving South viewer behavior. JioHotstar is expanding a significant volume of fresh South programming over the next year while deepening its creator base.
“Malayalam films now see more than 80% of their watch time coming from outside Kerala, and titles like ‘Heartbeat’ have crossed 100 million hours of viewing,” Sreeram says. “This nationwide discovery means our slate for 2025 must be designed to move across regions and languages with ease.”
Sreeram acknowledges that Tamil and Malayalam audiences behave differently from Telugu and Kannada viewers, requiring tailored approaches that don’t fragment the platform’s unified brand identity.
“Tamil and Malayalam viewers are highly exploratory, deeply engaged and respond strongly to culturally rooted, emotionally layered storytelling,” Sreeram says. “Telugu and Kannada audiences lean into scale, energy and high impact formats and often drive some of the biggest breakout moments on the platform.”
The localization occurs through personalization rather than brand fragmentation. Viewers see a surface that is culturally fluent and relevant to their tastes while the overall product experience remains consistent across the country, according to Sreeram.
“We keep the brand unified and use data, personalization and design to deliver nuance,” he explains. “The viewer gets an experience that feels tailored without the platform becoming four different products.”
Cross-market sampling represents sustained loyalty rather than casual discovery, according to Sreeram. JioHotstar now serves 100% of India’s post codes, with South entertainment reaching 99.96% of them. Films including “Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra,” “Mirai,” “Thudarum” and “Tourist Family” have achieved record-breaking or nationwide viewership.
“These titles are no longer confined to their home markets; they are becoming national hits,” Sreeram says.
The platform focuses on high-quality dubbing and subtitling that maintain authenticity while opening access. Personalized rows and geo-aware recommendations help viewers discover titles based on tone, theme and interest rather than linguistic familiarity.
“Bigg Boss” – the Indian version of the “Big Brother” format – continues as a major cultural engine for the platform, but Sreeram emphasizes that unscripted and scripted programming play different but complementary roles. The platform currently produces four “Bigg Boss” editions across South languages.
“‘Bigg Boss’ powers frequency, community and monetization, especially with the scale it commands on Connected TV and through live interactions,” Sreeram says. “Scripted originals build depth, long-term value and renewal intent, with creators returning season after season.”
The platform is significantly expanding its focus on unscripted content for the South beyond “Bigg Boss.” According to Sreeram, the region has strong appetite for high-impact, participative formats.
“‘Bigg Boss’ is only the beginning,” Sreeram says. “The pipeline ahead reflects a clear ambition to grow unscripted [as] one of our core pillar[s] of our entertainment strategy.”
The announced slate includes new unscripted formats “Comedy Cooks,” “Mad for Each Other” and “Second Love,” along with “Roadies” debuting in Telugu, marking the first time the adventure format will be produced for South Indian audiences.
Emerging creators are already integrated into how JioHotstar builds its South slate, according to Kutty. More than 500 creators — writers, directors and showrunners across South languages — have joined the JioHotstar ecosystem over the past 10 months, and a significant share of South streaming originals now sits on the platform.
Viewer behavior reinforces this direction, with audiences in the South watching more titles, exploring more genres and sampling across languages. That curiosity gives newer voices room to build distinctive story worlds alongside established talent, Kutty notes.
“So the approach now is structured,” he says. “We are putting clear pathways and development support in place across key South markets to ensure emerging storytellers come into the slate through consistent opportunities, not isolated projects.”
The commissioning strategy follows a logic of building a slate where experienced and emerging creators scale together rather than sequentially, according to Kutty.
As part of its partnership with the Government of Tamil Nadu announced at the Chennai event, JioHotstar will introduce creator-focused initiatives including writing labs, mentorship programs and skill-building workshops aimed at nurturing filmmakers, writers, editors and digital storytellers.
