The platform has seen a development of 70% in watch time for South content material, which is greater than the nationwide common.The South has outperformed the remainder of India in subscription depth, retention and linked TV adoption.

IMAGE: Narain, Rajit Kapur Nivin Pauly, Shruti Ramachandran and Veena Nandakumar in Pharma.

With an increase in consumption of tales associated to the southern area each in movies and sequence, JioHotstar goals to speculate Rs 4,000 crore for its South content material slate over a interval of 5 years and to develop its providing with 1,500 hours of recent South programming within the subsequent 12 months.

This follows the platform seeing a development of round 70 per cent in watch time for South content material, which is greater than the nationwide common, in accordance with Krishnan Kutty, head of cluster leisure (South), JioHotstar.

As we speak South would not observe developments, Kutty stated, moderately it creates them when it comes to content material, with audiences participating extra with South content material and watching your complete sequence on the platform.

Kutty and Sushant Sreeram, chief advertising and marketing officer & head-subscriber video on demand (SVOD), JioHotstar, famous that the southern area has emerged as one in every of JioHotstar’s strongest development engines, outperforming the remainder of the nation in subscription depth, retention, and CTV (linked TV) adoption.

On Tuesday, JioHotstar’s streaming platform introduced its South content material slate with 25 titles spanning originals, movies and sequence.

This comes after international streaming big Netflix introduced to amass Warner Bros, together with its movie and tv studios, HBO Max and HBO, additional strengthening its presence in India by way of premium Hollywood content material.

This may trigger a slight dip in viewership for English content material on JioHotstar, whereas total, the regional streaming platforms must improve deal with native and area of interest genres to keep up differentiation available in the market.

 

IMAGE: Nagarjuna in Bigg Boss.

OTT gamers in India like Z5 have been specializing in attracting new subscriber base from Tier-II, III cities by way of rooted cultural tales and aiming to develop its attain within the South by way of language-specific subscription gives.

“We’re very bullish on sustaining and even accelerating the momentum that we’ve got seen each from audiences from the South, and in addition from the range and the form of tales which have come out of the South on JioHotstar, over the following 12 to 18 months,” Kutty added.

Sreeram additionally famous that the platform has been investing in new codecs of content material, that are new to the streaming section in India.

On the similar time, within the final 10 months, the streaming platform of India’s largest media conglomerate collaborated with over 500 writers, administrators, and showrunners, with virtually 75 per cent of this yr’s South originals opting to launch their content material on JioHotstar.

Individually, in a media roundtable in Chennai on Monday, the corporate introduced that it’s participating with the federal government of Tamil Nadu to assist strengthen the artistic ecosystem, from supporting artistic labs to enabling internships and collaborating in state-driven programmes.

IMAGE: Kalyani Priyadarshan in Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra.

With JioHotstar’s 400 million customers and sustained consumer base, and its place because the nation’s solely streaming vacation spot with greater than 3 lakh hours of leisure, Sreeram within the media roundtable said that JioHotstar now serves audiences throughout 100 per cent of India’s pin codes, and has constructed the nation’s largest CTV universe with greater than 85 million units.

“We’re seeing subscribers from down South spend considerably extra time on the platform and watching extra titles throughout extra numerous genres. It’s affordable to consider that interprets into a lot greater retention and, subsequently, a lot greater subscriber development as properly,” Sreeram highlighted.

The platform isn’t limiting itself to anybody kind of format for content material, Sreeram stated, as all segments throughout unique sequence, actuality exhibits, and long-form content material are seeing development on JioHotstar.

Moreover, he famous that over 80 per cent of Malayalam watch time is pushed by viewers outdoors Kerala.

Fantasy-adventure movie Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra, which broke the Malayalam movie business’s field workplace document. and one other Telugu-language fantasy superhero movie Mirai turned the platform’s most-watched motion pictures in 2025.

IMAGE: A scene from Heartbeat.

“Past movies, Massive Boss (within the South) has been a phenomenon on this market. There is a present known as Heartbeat, which is doubtlessly one of many greatest OTT-scripted exhibits throughout all platforms with 100 million hours of consumption this yr. It is not a single section which has pushed efficiency,” stated Sreeram, including that there’s nonetheless extra alternative to develop and with the final 10 months’ efficiency, the platform remains to be simply scraping the tip of this chance.

From the advertiser’s perspective, native advertisers within the South are actually desperate to spend extra for commercials on JioHotstar as a result of huge attain of its content material.

Within the final 10 months, Kutty stated, JioHotstar has elevated the variety of native advertisers on its platform by 50 per cent.

In the meantime, Sreeram added that the platform is utilizing AI and exploring and on the similar time scripting, pre-production, manufacturing, and post-production processes to enhance its total productiveness.