What’s Happening? Mukesh Ambani's Jio Cinema likely to Shut Down - Read Now
Jio Cinema Shut Down: Jio Cinema is set to shut down as Mukesh Ambani's Reliance merges with Disney+ Hotstar in an $8.5 billion deal. This strategic move aims to create a dominant streaming platform, enhancing market share and improving subscriber experience in India.
Jio Cinema Shut Down: As per sources, the strategic move by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries is to shut down Jio Cinema as part of a strategic deal emerging from the widely reported $8.5 billion merger with Walt Disney's media assets in India. The merger was announced in February 2024. Consolidated streaming services by Reliance; thus, Jio Cinema is expected to merge with Disney+ Hotstar into one dominant streamer.
Sources close to the matter indicate that the firm will maintain Disney+ Hotstar as the channel of choice for streaming. Jio Cinema, on the other hand, is several steps behind Disney+ Hotstar in the number of downloads from the Google Play Store, with 100 million downloads compared to over half a billion by the latter. The merger aims at pushing this gap and has streamlined its services using one platform.
The deal merges the Viacom18 and Star India companies into one giant media machine that will not only control two of the largest streaming platforms but more than 100 television channels across the country. According to Reliance's annual reports, in the quarter ended December 2023, Jio Cinema had around 225 million monthly users while Disney+ Hotstar tallied 333 million subscribers. The company saw the highest rise in paid subscribers, which rose by 61 million to 35.5 million, during the season of IPL.
Jio Cinema is a merger of a few OTT channels, Voot and others, under one umbrella - Viacom18. In the context of the merger, available resource optimisation will be targeted more towards Disney+ Hotstar, which already has a lion's share of the market.
In this light, Reliance's large-scale restructuring initiatives can be considered as a brave attempt at integration and reformatted entities. On one hand, the future of Jio Cinema, especially, would see uncertainty as this platform shuts its doors. Consolidation and maximizing market share in the competitive digital space has been Ambani's approach toward reformatted streaming space in India.