JioStar, the Reliance-controlled media and entertainment company, reported a nearly 53% sequential drop in net profit to ₹419 crore in the March quarter, weighed down by weak advertising revenue, higher content costs and continued sports investments.
India’s largest media company’s fourth-quarter revenue from operations rose 21.4% quarter-on-quarter to ₹8,372 crore, while its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, fell to ₹827 crore from ₹1,303 crore in the three months through December 2025, JioStar said in a statement on Friday.
The company’s television and streaming businesses got a lift from strong performance of Hindi and regional soaps, OTT originals and the T20 Men’s Cricket World Cup, while the two-part theatrical release Dhurandhar performed well at the box office, enhancing its value across OTT and television.
Digital subscriptions saw sustained quarter-on-quarter growth, the company said, with direct-to-consumer subscriptions reaching an all-time high, aided by the launch of the new monthly plans to improve affordability and flexibility to users. Average monthly active users (MAU) stood at 500 million, rising 10% sequentially in the March quarter.
Further, the platform that has just launched microdramas under the ‘Tadka’ brand, partnered with OpenAI in February to integrate ChatGPT-powered conversational voice discovery (CVD) that allows users to search for, discover, and discuss content via natural language (text or voice) in multiple languages, covering both on-demand and live sports. Other in-app commerce integrations include in-app food ordering with Swiggy on the IPL and ‘Shop the Look’ partnership with NewMe on reality show Splitsvilla.
“We made foundational bets on technology and on AI-driven technologies, in particular, to make sure that we are competitive in an increasingly technology-led marketplace,” Ishan Chatterjee, chief executive officer, sports, JioStar, said during at the earning presentation on Friday. He added that the platform recorded the highest-ever monetisation of the T20 World Cup, driven by strong advertiser depth, as well as expansion into multiple categories despite the real money gaming ban during this previous calendar year. That said, TV ad revenue remained under some pressure, especially due to cuts seen on the FMCG side.
As far as sports programming goes, the quarter featured the ICC T20 World Cup, Women’s Premier League, and the India vs New Zealand bilateral series. IPL 2026, which began late March, reached over 515 million viewers on linear TV and digital during the opening weekend, the company said.
In terms of entertainment programming, JioStar said TV entertainment viewership share stood at 34.2% share, reaching over 810 million viewers nationally. The dominance comes on the back of shows like Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Laughter Chefs Season Three in the Hindi speaking markets (HSM), while Star Utsav has successfully re-entered the free-to-air (FTA) segment in April 25. In the regional language market, Star Pravah (Marathi), Star Jalsha (Bengali), Star Maa (Telugu) and Asianet (Malayalam) rank one as far as entertainment channels go.
The company named The 50 (season one) as the second-biggest reality show ever on JioHotstar, while another OTT original Chiraiya emerged among the top five most-watched limited-episode series of the year. As far as regional movies and specials go, Prabhas-starrer ‘Raja Saab’ emerged as the most-watched South film on JioHotstar, while Vijay Sethupathi-starrer ‘Muthu Alias Kaattaan’ became the biggest South Special launch to date.
In February 2024, billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and The Walt Disney Co. formed a joint venture combining the businesses of Reliance’s associate company, Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd, and Disney’s Star India.
JioHotstar, the video-streaming platform created by merging Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema, crossed 300 million paid subscribers, RIL has said. In contrast, according to industry experts, paid subscribers for Amazon Prime Video in India currently stand at 21 million compared to 12-15 million for close rival Netflix.
The combination of JioCinema and Hotstar has created a powerful platform, poised to accelerate the expansion of India’s premium VoD (video-on-demand) market, Mihir Shah, vice-president, Media Partners Asia, an independent research and consulting firm, said in an earlier interview to Mint. But “success will depend on their ability to innovate with diverse content forms, leverage interactive features to deepen viewer engagement, and deliver a consistently high-quality experience across a large user base,” he had pointed out.
