JioStar says Indian content appeals beyond South Asia as it partners with Starz Play for MENA expansion

Amit Malhotra, head of international business at JioStar, told The Hindu in New Delhi on October 23, 2026, that the quality of Indian storytelling and production has improved drastically and is now attracting viewers from cultures outside South Asia. The company has tied up with international streaming platform Starz Play to expand into the Middle East and North Africa and launched in Singapore, the UK and Canada in September.

Malhotra said the decision to partner with Starz Play was driven by rising demand for Indian content outside India. “We are seeing that the opportunity to go international is well beyond just super-serving the South Asian community today,” he told The Hindu. “Because of the quality of storytelling from India, the quality of production from India, the overall narrative in terms of our content is so strong and the quality is so high, we do see audiences from other cultures embracing this and watching it at scale.”

Maaz Sheikh, founder and CEO of Starz Play, echoed the assessment and traced the change in Indian content to broader sources beyond Bombay. “One of the big things that has changed, especially since the Amitabh Bachchan days, is that the storytelling from India, not just Bombay and Bollywood but also from the regional powerhouses, whether it’s Malayalam or Tamil or Telugu, that storytelling and the quality of production and quality of acting has completely changed,” he said. “It’s especially in the last 10 years that it has come of age, if you will.”

Both executives stressed the continued centrality of the South Asian diaspora to the partnership’s value. “The MENA region, as we understand it, has 19 million South Asians across its 15 markets, and the largest part of this is based in the Gulf Cooperation Council,” Malhotra said. “The GCC accounts for only 12% of MENA’s overall population of 500 million people, but it is the one that has the spending power, it has the largest diaspora, and it also has an advertiser base that is focused on driving that from a consumption standpoint.”

Malhotra described that 19 million audience as “probably one of the largest single South Asian audiences looking for good content to watch.” Sheikh put related figures on the population mix, saying the region is home to almost 20 million Indian expats and that, when including viewers from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the addressable market becomes “40-50 million.” Sheikh said he would not disclose Starz Play’s current South Asian customer base in MENA but signalled expected growth: “We’re looking to grow our South Asian base by 30% in the next three to six months, that’s a safe projection,” he said. “If we do extremely well, we’ll get there by the end of the year. If we take a little longer, our conservative case is that we’ll get there by the end of March 2027.”

Malhotra also outlined a technology dimension to the partnership, saying JioStar will share engagement tools with Starz Play. “We have 300 million subscribers and 500 million monthly active users,” he said. “That has come by us taking a very focused approach around engagement, and building tools around engagement to increase the experience of consumers.” He added: “That technology know-how is what we want to be able to share with our partners, so that we can actually increase engagement on these platforms.”

Sheikh confirmed Starz Play will make JioStar content available to its users without raising subscription prices and set out the commercial rationale. “The way you make money is through subscribers, and there you have two levers,” he explained. “You have new signups, or you can keep each subscriber longer. The reason we have entered this model, where we’re not increasing the price, is because what we’re going to lose in margin on each subscriber, we’re going to make up in volume of new signups, and in reducing our churn so the customer stays with us longer.”

Following the tie-up announced earlier this month, Starz Play projects a 30% increase in its South Asian subscriber base within the next three to six months, with an optimistic completion by the end of the year and a conservative target by the end of March 2027.