“Success isn’t about building for India — it’s about building from India,” said Sushant Sreeram, Head of SVOD Business and CMO, JioStar, capturing the company’s bold, outward-looking vision at APOS 2025 in Bali. Representing a platform with over 500 million MAUs and close to 300 million subscribers, Sushant outlined how JioHotstar is shaping a new era of digital video that merges scale, empathy, and innovation — not just for the Indian market, but from it.
In a candid and forward-thinking conversation, Sushant highlighted the growing fluidity between AVOD and SVOD models, arguing that success now lies in flexibility and personalization over rigidity and standardization. “The reality is far more fluid,” he noted. “Our challenge and opportunity is to serve users across a continuum of monetization options. It’s about creating flexibility in how people engage and pay.”
He called out the fallacy of the one-size-fits-all strategy in a market as economically layered as India. “The top 10% of Indian households rival the UK or Germany in purchasing power parity — but the next 10% diverge drastically,” Sushant emphasized. “That’s where pricing innovation and agile design must kick in.”
These insights came during a high-profile panel discussion on Transforming the Entertainment Experience & Developing New Monetization Models, held as part of APOS 2025, a leading industry summit organized by Media Partners Asia (MPA). Joining Sushant on stage were Aditya Swamy, Regional Director – India, SEA, ANZ at Google Play, and Sutanto Hartono, Managing Director, Emtek & CEO, SCM & Vidio. The trio explored how tech, content, and business models are converging to reshape user behavior across the Asia-Pacific region.
Reflecting on product innovation, Sushant pointed to this year’s IPL 2025, which saw a staggering 40% surge in viewership during opening weekend — despite it being the 18th season. “That didn’t happen by chance,” he explained. “It was deliberate product thinking. From multi-cam viewing and VR to rich regional language localization, we reimagined what a sports experience could be.”
Sushant also delved into the pivotal role of machine learning and AI in personalizing the entertainment experience, saying that these technologies are no longer futuristic promises but present-day essentials. “Whether it’s real-time localization, content tagging, or predictive personalization, we’re using AI not to just capture attention — but to court emotion.”
As the session drew to a close, Sushant left the audience with a guiding principle that underpins JioStar’s strategy: empathy at scale. “We’ve been fortunate to build at the intersection of product, storytelling, and technology. But in India, scale isn’t just a metric — it’s a responsibility. It requires listening, designing with agility, and monetizing with empathy.”
