REGINA, Sask. — India’s largest video streaming service, Jiostar, launched in Canada, promising to bring on a wider audience from the South Asian diaspora through enhanced interactive features.
Jiostar’s new subscriptions replace Hotstar that has served Canadian audiences since 2017.
As of Sept. 2, Hotstar disappeared from Canada, the UK and Singapore and all three markets converted to the JioHotstar app and brand simultaneously. Existing subscribers were migrated automatically.
What's new isn't the platform's presence here — it's what Canadian viewers can now do with it.
Industry experts say JioStar's rebrand gives some Canadian viewers a more "formalized" way of accessing the platform, moving away from the informal downloads many relied on.
The U.S. was not included in the launch. Hotstar once ran a standalone U.S. service, but in 2021, it was folded into Hulu and ESPN+. JioStar was created in November 2024 when Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries merged its media assets with Disney's India business in an $8.5-billion deal.
Canadian subscribers now get Hindi television shows such as Anupama and Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai seven days ahead of their broadcast in India. They can also vote live on the Bigg Boss reality franchise across all six language editions, with a 24/7 live feed — access even the UK doesn't get.
Pricing has changed too: Monthly plans are gone in Canada, replaced by quarterly ($19.99) and annual ($49.99) options. The UK service is allowing existing monthly subscribers to keep their plans until the auto-renewal lapses.
The platform is owned by JioStar, the joint venture between Viacom18 and Disney India. Viacom18 is controlled by Reliance Industries, the conglomerate led by Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man.
In a press release announcing the changes, Amit Malhotra, JioStar's Head of International Business, said the company wants to "reimagine how audiences experience entertainment," positioning the rebrand as more than cosmetic. It’s a shift toward personalization, real-time engagement and a deeper content library, now topping 160,000 hours across 12 languages, according to the press release.
The most recent Hindi season of Bigg Boss drew 133 million viewers, according to figures released by JioStar. Digital reach increased 30 per cent compared to the previous season and the grand finale peaked at 4.5 million concurrent viewers on the platform.
JioHotstar is chasing a big audience in Canada too. According to the 2021 census, 2.57 million people in Canada identified as South Asian, making them the country's largest visible minority group. Of those, 1.35 million identified specifically as being of Indian origin.
A bigger pipe, not a new one
Faiza Hirji, a professor at McMaster University who has studied Bollywood's relationship with diaspora audiences for years, is skeptical that the platform has changed.
"South Asians living in diaspora will find a way to access this kind of content because it is so important to them," Hirji said, pointing to the decades-old, often informal ways Canadian audiences have gotten their Bollywood fix — passing around videotapes, satellite dishes and unofficial set-top boxes.
In Hirji’s view, JioHotstar has made access to its content more formal and easier, rather than increasing the number of subscribers.
According to Hirji, the channel’s attraction isn't really about India at all. It's about recognition: Seeing people who look like them; hearing a familiar language; or catching a glimpse of rituals and music without ever having lived in the country.
She traced back the industry's courtship of diaspora audiences roughly three decades, to films like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, a story centred on Indian diaspora life in the UK and the longest-running film in Indian cinema history. The film is still screened daily at a Mumbai theatre 30 years after its release, which Hirji said marked a turning point where Bollywood could no longer ignore the affluent, growing audience living abroad.
Interactive features such as live voting are simply the next step in that long trajectory, rather than a break from it, she said.
Voting as a hook
Toronto arts and culture reporter Aparita Bhandari, who co-hosts the Bollywood podcast, Khabardaar, sees the live-voting feature as a deliberate strategy rather than a gimmick.
She said interactive participation is a way to expand the platform's audience base, drawing in viewers who might otherwise treat Bollywood content as background noise rather than appointment viewing.
