Last November when Disney+ launched In the US, it was an immediate hit by gaining almost 10 million subscribers in just 24 hours. Now Disney has set an eye on the growing streaming market of India. Disney CEO Bob Iger made the announcement on its quarterly earnings call on Tuesday that they will be launching Disney+ in India on March 29th through Hotstar. Disney owns Hotstar through the acquisition of Fox.
As of now, Hotstar has two premium subscription options that are Hotstar Premium and Hotstar VIP which will be rebranded as “Disney plus Hotstar.” Pricing has not been revealed yet. But the tiers will keep offering in the same nature. This means that the rebranded Hotstar Premium will include Disney’s back catalog and Disney+ originals while the rebranded Hotstar VIP won’t include Disney+ Originals.
Iger said Tuesday, “We’re excited to announce that we will be launching Disney+ in India through our Hotstar service on March 29th at the beginning of the Indian Premier League cricket season. We will be rebranding our existing Hotstar VIP and Premium subscription tiers to Disney Plus Hotstar. We see this as a great opportunity to use the proven platform of Hotstar to launch the new Disney+ service in one of the most populous countries and fastest-growing economies in the world.”
It will be interesting to see how this will affect other streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime in India. According to the reports, Netflix has already lost a million customers to Disney+ in the US. In India, Netflix is fairly new and they are also trying to grub the market so which new strategy they take to combat this will be interesting to see.