Quality of Indian content has improved drastically, appeals to other cultures as well: JioStar international business chief

The quality of storytelling and production from India, including outside of Bollywood, has improved strongly over the last decade and is now attracting viewers from cultures outside of South Asia as well, according to Amit Malhotra, the head of international business at JioStar.It is this increased demand from outside India that has led JioStar to tie up with the international streaming platform Starz Play to expand into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions, a deal that was announced earlier this month.This comes soon after JioStar launched across three new markets — Singapore, the UK, and Canada — in September.Appeal beyond South Asians“We are seeing that the opportunity to go international is well beyond just super-serving the South Asian community today,” Mr. Malhotra told The Hindu in an interview.“Because of the quality of storytelling from India, the quality of production from India, the overall narrative in terms of our content is so strong and the quality is so high, we do see audiences from other cultures embracing this and watching it at scale,” he added.Maaz Sheikh, the founder and CEO of Starz Play agreed with this assessment of Indian content, saying it has come a long way since the days of Bollywood movies driven by stars such as Amitabh Bachchan.“One of the big things that has changed, especially since the Amitabh Bachchan days, is that the storytelling from India, not just Bombay and Bollywood but also from the regional powerhouses, whether it’s Malayalam or Tamil or Telugu, that storytelling and the quality of production and quality of acting has completely changed,” Mr. Sheikh said during the interview. “It’s especially in the last 10 years that it has come of age, if you will.”South Asians still a major marketThat said, the two streaming chiefs acknowledged that a substantial chunk of the value proposition of joining forces is backed by the strong South Asian market.“The MENA region, as we understand it, has 19 million South Asians across its 15 markets, and the largest part of this is based in the Gulf Cooperation Council,” Mr. Malhotra said.“The GCC accounts for only 12% of MENA’s overall population of 500 million people, but it is the one that has the spending power, it has the largest diaspora, and it also has an advertiser base that is focused on driving that from a consumption standpoint,” he added.Overall, Mr Malhotra said, that 19 million audience is probably one of the largest single South Asian audiences looking for good content to watch.Mr. Sheikh said the region is home to almost 20 million Indian expats, which, if you add the entire South Asian diaspora from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, becomes a 40-50 million viewer addressable market.While Mr. Sheikh could not reveal his company’s current South Asian customer base in the MENA region, he expressed confidence in rapid growth following the partnership with JioStar.“We’re looking to grow our South Asian base by 30% in the next three to six months, that’s a safe projection,” Mr. Sheikh said. “If we do extremely well, we’ll get there by the end of the year. If we take a little longer, our conservative case is that we’ll get there by the end of March 2027.”Partnership beyond contentApart from providing content to Starz Play, Mr. Malhotra also said that the two companies will also be collaborating on technology, an area that JioStar has a lot to offer.“We have 300 million subscribers and 500 million monthly active users,” Mr. Malhotra said. “That has come by us taking a very focused approach around engagement, and building tools around engagement to increase the experience of consumers.”“That technology know-how is what we want to be able to share with our partners, so that we can actually increase engagement on these platforms,” he added.From Mr. Sheikh’s point of view, the collaboration will also help his company make better use of the two main drivers of revenue for streaming platforms — new signups and retention. The benefits from the deal, he said, are such that he will be providing JioStar content to his users at no extra subscription price.“The way you make money is through subscribers, and there you have two levers,” Mr. Sheikh explained. “You have new signups, or you can keep each subscriber longer. The reason we have entered this model, where we’re not increasing the price, is because what we’re going to lose in margin on each subscriber, we’re going to make up in volume of new signups, and in reducing our churn so the customer stays with us longer.”