Mumbai: JioHotstar has outlined its vision for the next phase of streaming, centred on conversational discovery, interactive engagement, and commerce-led experiences, as senior leadership shared the platform’s evolving product and technology roadmap at APOS 2026.
Speaking during a session titled India Streaming: The Product View, Bharath Ram, Chief Product Officer, JioStar, and Vijay Seshadri, Chief Architect, JioStar, discussed how consumer-first design, artificial intelligence, and engineering at scale are shaping richer entertainment experiences for one of the world’s largest streaming audiences.
In conversation with Vivek Couto, CEO, Media Partners Asia, the executives explored how streaming platforms are moving beyond content availability to focus on discovery, engagement, and seamless journeys across devices and formats.
Opening the discussion, Bharath spoke about designing for India’s highly diverse audience base that spans mobile-first viewers, Connected TV households, and premium subscribers.
“A lot of product vision starts backwards from the consumer experience,” Bharath said. “The sooner you can remove yourself out of the way and give consumers the content they want to watch and the experiences they want to go through, the retention cycle kicks in automatically.”
He noted that with nearly 100 million Connected TVs already present in the market, the opportunity now lies in deepening engagement and encouraging viewing behaviour across screens. Bharath highlighted IPL 2026 as a key moment that accelerated adoption of Connected TV experiences among mobile-first users.
Expanding on the complexity of operating at scale, Vijay reflected on the technology infrastructure required to deliver seamless experiences during periods of peak demand.
From handling millions of concurrent interactions to managing subscription spikes during marquee live events—touching nearly five million subscription requests per minute—the company’s focus remains on building resilient systems that maintain performance at scale.
The discussion also examined the future of content discovery and the growing role of artificial intelligence in simplifying how consumers engage with expanding content libraries.
“Nothing much has changed in content discovery in the last 15 to 20 years,” Vijay said. “Conversational discovery, where users switch from typing phrases to having conversations with their systems, is a very key paradigm shift.”
Developed in partnership with OpenAI, JioHotstar’s conversational discovery experience is already witnessing strong adoption, with over 60% of users choosing voice over text when both options are available. Combining natural language interactions with visual recommendations, the feature is designed to make content exploration more intuitive and personalised.
Vijay added that beyond generative AI, significant opportunities exist in extracting deeper intelligence from content libraries to improve discoverability, context, and user interaction.
Building on that theme, Bharath highlighted JAMS, JioHotstar’s video intelligence layer that enables content to become machine-readable and unlocks richer contextual understanding.
“If you truly start peeling the layers of the onion and understanding what the items within a piece of content are, the separation between content and commerce starts thinning,” Bharath said.
By identifying people, products, and objects within content environments, the platform aims to create contextual experiences where discovery, engagement, and commerce become increasingly interconnected.
The conversation also explored how interactive experiences are reshaping viewer behaviour. Bharath cited initiatives such as Jeeto Dhan Dhana Dhan and JioHotstar’s integration with Swiggy as examples of audiences engaging with live content in more immersive ways.
Vijay further noted that many of the AI and conversational capabilities being developed could extend well beyond entertainment.
“The next sector to be disrupted is product commerce,” Vijay said. “A platform like ours that can crack a seamless purchasing experience while watching content could see a transformative change over the next 12 months.”
From voice-led discovery and Connected TV engagement to AI-enabled commerce and interactive participation, JioHotstar’s roadmap reflects its continued focus on building seamless and personalised consumer experiences across an evolving streaming landscape
