India’s media colossus JioStar is doubling down on content material funding, pouring roughly $3.6 billion into programming this yr, with plans to extend spending additional in 2026, in accordance with vice chair Uday Shankar.
Speaking at Mumbai’s inaugural World Audio Visual Entertainment Summit (WAVES), Shankar revealed the corporate’s aggressive content material technique whereas highlighting the explosive development potential of India’s media market.
“In 2024, the company spent [INR]25,000 crores [$3 billion] on content alone. In 2025, that number went to [INR]30,000 crores [$3.6 billion], and the number next year will be over [INR]32,000-35,000 crores [$3.8-4.1 billion],” Shankar instructed interviewer Vivek Couto of Media Partners Asia. “In three years, we have spent more than $10 billion.”
Since the $8.5 million merger of Reliance’s Jio platforms with Disney’s Indian property, JioStar has defied trade skeptics by rising each its conventional pay TV and streaming companies. The firm now boasts half a billion platform guests, although Shankar declined to verify particular subscriber numbers, which have been final recorded at 200 million in April.
“The narrative was that pay TV is dead. The narrative was that the premium streaming space is a limited space of 15-20 million subscribers,” Shankar stated. “Pay TV has added numbers, not lost numbers since we came together, because we are very focused.”
About the significance of affordability within the Indian market, Shankar pressured: “If you’re only selling to 15-20 million people, you can price it at whatever value you want. But if your ambition is to take it to 300 million or half a billion people, then you have to keep their affordability front and center in your strategy.”
He credited worth sensitivity as a key driver of India’s media development. “The entire explosive growth of cable and satellite television in this country has happened because the leaders of cable and satellite industry kept price sensitivity in the market. And we need to be price sensitive.”
Shankar criticized media corporations globally for failing to innovate monetization fashions. “Seventy years ago, newspapers were taking advertising and charging subscription. Even today, the latest media company is still doing subscription and advertising,” he noticed.
He predicted India’s $30 billion video leisure market may double inside 5 years if corporations pursue deeper distribution and develop content material tailor-made particularly for Indian audiences. “There is a need to go deeper and create new brands,” Shankar stated, emphasizing alternatives in tier three and 4 cities.
The govt additionally addressed India’s theatrical market challenges, noting that whereas the Hindi-language Bollywood has struggled, southern Indian movie industries proceed to thrive – a divergence he attributed to content material evolution failing to maintain tempo with altering viewers preferences within the north.
Looking forward, Shankar urged regulators to keep away from homogenizing laws throughout completely different platforms. “If the media companies have not innovated enough, the regulators are even further behind,” he remarked. “You keep hearing even now conversations about ‘all screens should be treated alike’… but you cannot do that. Then you will kill the value in both businesses.”
