Indian streamer JioStar is building commerce into a third revenue stream alongside advertising and subscriptions, entertainment CEO Kevin Vaz said at APOS 2026 Tuesday, pointing to live integrations with food delivery platforms and branded movie premiere partnerships as early evidence of a shift he expects to accelerate as cyclical pressure bears down on the Indian ad market.

Vaz told the audience that JioHotstar, India’s leading streaming service, has surpassed 500 million monthly active users and 260 million paid subscriptions, and now counts more than one billion app downloads and full pin code coverage across India, offering consumers access to roughly 300,000 hours of content. JioStar’s broader linear business operates 100 channels and reaches more than 85 million connected TV households.

The platform was created in three months after the merger of Viacom18 and The Walt Disney Company’s India operations closed on Nov. 14, 2024 – a consolidation timeline Vaz described as unusually swift by global industry standards. “We are getting two highly successful companies together, each with their own technology, content, consumer base, and cultures, and bringing them together,” Vaz said.

Vaz argued that scale should be measured not by the size of an audience but by the depth of the impact on that audience’s lives. “Scale is defined as what is the impact you have on people’s lives after you reach them,” he said.

On the question of how to categorize JioStar, Vaz positioned the company as a technology business first, with storytelling as its core driver rather than its defining identity. “For us, we see JioStar as a technology company that also delivers content. Storytelling will always be at the core of everything that we do. It drives engagement, it drives fandom, it drives cultural impact. But at the end of the day it requires technology to make sure how that storytelling is transmitted, how it’s personalized, how it’s experienced, and how you do this at scale,” Vaz said. He cited a partnership with OpenAI among recent technology investments, alongside work on AI-driven content discoverability and short-form offerings.

The short-form strand takes the form of Tadka, JioStar’s microdrama service, which launched April 3 and was integrated into the existing JioHotstar app rather than offered as a separate product. In its first six to eight weeks, the service attracted some 100 million viewers. He described the decision to house microdrama content alongside long-form drama and films as a deliberate consumer experience choice, designed to let viewers move between vertical short-form content and full-length programming without leaving the platform.

Commerce represents what Vaz called a third revenue stream for an industry that has historically depended only on advertising and subscriptions – and one he expects to grow in importance as advertising faces cyclical pressure. He pointed to a live integration with Swiggy during sports broadcasts that allowed viewers to order food while watching, and a tie-up with clothing brand NewMe on one of the company’s most-watched shows through which viewers could shop the looks worn by contestants on screen. A recent partnership with Samsung around the premiere of “Dhurandhar The Revenge” on JioHotstar offered the Galaxy S26 through an exclusive promotion. “This is a strong example of how premium content can deliver meaningful impact for brands and marks an important milestone for us,” Vaz said.

Asked where entertainment is headed over the next five years, Vaz acknowledged the difficulty of prediction in a period of rapid technological change. “Entertainment will change from being a passive consumption to being a much more active, involved consumer,” he said.

Vaz was in conversation with Vivek Couto, executive director of Media Partners Asia, which produces APOS.