Jio Cinema merging with Disney+ Hotstar

Hello and Namaste Everyone,

Jio Cinema is a popular OTT platform owned by Jio in India. Jio is a leading telecom company in India. This is one of the OTT platforms I have used for many years. Earlier this was free for all the Jio telecom users but this year they started the premium subscription which is also reasonable so I started paying for that. There are so many options for the content and the overall content variety is good in this OTT. I use it on my phone as well as on TV and these days I also watch Big Boss on Jio cinema.

Now there is news for all the users using this platform Jio Cinema is going to be merged with Disney Hotstar. Disney is a very big company in content creation and a few years back they partnered with Hotstar in India. After this partnership, the application was renamed to Disney + Hotstar. Now there is another merger by Jio Cinema and it is expected that soon the content from Geo Cinema will be shifted to the Disney + Hotstar OTT.

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It was not expected because being a leading telecom company in the country they should not be merging with any other brand in the same space. I don't know why the company is doing this and I don't get a good vibe that this will help the Indian consumers. Maybe this way Disney will try to expand its presence in the Indian market because as of now the Disney Hotstar membership is expensive. The price for a Disney Hotstar premium subscription is the same as Amazon Prime Video but Geo Cinema is quite reasonable. If I go by the numbers then the cost of a year subscription for Disney Hotstar is 1499 inr and the same is also for Amazon Prime. Now if I talk about the cost for the geo cinema then it is just ₹30 approx for a month which is like ₹360 approximately in a year and this is very reasonable.

Maybe after the merger, it is going to be expensive for the consumers and some of the other platforms that are must-haves in India. Think that Hot Star is also the one where we can get a lot of content from the star group and now since it is Disney Hot Star South the content from Disney is also available. Jio Cinema has acquired the Voot app in the past so all the content related to colour TV is available in this. It's like there are a lot of fluctuations going on in the Indian OTT industry. If such big brands will try to merge then it's hard to say anything. There is another OTT company called Zee5 and they are also in discussion with Soly Liv for the merger. Somewhere it seems like after some time we will have limited players in the OTT industry also and it is going to be the same as we had seen in the telecom industry.

There was a time when we had more than 10 telecom players across the country but now it is just four which also includes a company owned by the government. Now it is the time for consumers to wait and watch and see how things happen and what changes it brings for them but as a consumer I expect the prices to be reasonable so that more people can use such platforms. If prices increase with big numbers then probably it will be a good time for me or many of you just like me to switch back to the DTH services.

Thank you so much
Stay Safe

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