The platform has seen a growth of 70% in watch time for South content, which is more than the national average.The South has outperformed the rest of India in subscription depth, retention and connected TV adoption.
With a rise in consumption of stories related to the southern region both in films and series, JioHotstar aims to invest Rs 4,000 crore for its South content slate over a period of five years and to expand its offering with 1,500 hours of fresh South programming in the next 12 months.
This follows the platform seeing a growth of around 70 per cent in watch time for South content, which is more than the national average, according to Krishnan Kutty, head of cluster entertainment (South), JioHotstar.
Today South doesn't follow trends, Kutty said, rather it creates them in terms of content, with audiences engaging more with South content and watching the entire series on the platform.
Kutty and Sushant Sreeram, chief marketing officer & head-subscriber video on demand (SVOD), JioHotstar, noted that the southern region has emerged as one of JioHotstar's strongest growth engines, outperforming the rest of the country in subscription depth, retention, and CTV (connected TV) adoption.
On Tuesday, JioHotstar's streaming platform announced its South content slate with 25 titles spanning originals, films and series.
This comes after global streaming giant Netflix announced to acquire Warner Bros, including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO, further strengthening its presence in India through premium Hollywood content.
This might cause a slight dip in viewership for English content on JioHotstar, while overall, the regional streaming platforms will have to increase focus on local and niche genres to maintain differentiation in the market.
OTT players in India like Z5 have been focusing on attracting new subscriber base from Tier-II, III cities through rooted cultural stories and aiming to expand its reach in the South through language-specific subscription offers.
"We are very bullish on maintaining and even accelerating the momentum that we have seen both from audiences from the South, and also from the diversity and the kind of stories that have come out of the South on JioHotstar, over the next 12 to 18 months," Kutty added.
Sreeram also noted that the platform has been investing in new formats of content, which are new to the streaming segment in India.
At the same time, in the last 10 months, the streaming platform of India's largest media conglomerate collaborated with over 500 writers, directors, and showrunners, with almost 75 per cent of this year's South originals opting to launch their content on JioHotstar.
Separately, in a media roundtable in Chennai on Monday, the company announced that it is engaging with the government of Tamil Nadu to help strengthen the creative ecosystem, from supporting creative labs to enabling internships and participating in state-driven programmes.
With JioHotstar's 400 million users and sustained user base, and its position as the country's only streaming destination with more than 3 lakh hours of entertainment, Sreeram in the media roundtable stated that JioHotstar now serves audiences across 100 per cent of India's pin codes, and has built the country's largest CTV universe with more than 85 million devices.
"We are seeing subscribers from down South spend significantly more time on the platform and watching more titles across more diverse genres. It is reasonable to believe that translates into much higher retention and, therefore, much higher subscriber growth as well," Sreeram highlighted.
The platform is not limiting itself to any one type of format for content, Sreeram said, as all segments across original series, reality shows, and long-form content are seeing growth on JioHotstar.
Additionally, he noted that over 80 per cent of Malayalam watch time is driven by viewers outside Kerala.
Fantasy-adventure film Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra, which broke the Malayalam film industry's box office record. and another Telugu-language fantasy superhero film Mirai became the platform's most-watched movies in 2025.
"Beyond films, Big Boss (in the South) has been a phenomenon in this market. There's a show called Heartbeat, which is potentially one of the biggest OTT-scripted shows across all platforms with 100 million hours of consumption this year. It's not a single segment which has driven performance," said Sreeram, adding that there is still more opportunity to grow and with the last 10 months' performance, the platform is still just scraping the tip of this opportunity.
From the advertiser's point of view, local advertisers in the South are now eager to spend more for advertisements on JioHotstar due to the vast reach of its content.
In the last 10 months, Kutty said, JioHotstar has increased the number of local advertisers on its platform by 50 per cent.
Meanwhile, Sreeram added that the platform is using AI and exploring and at the same time scripting, pre-production, production, and post-production processes to improve its overall productivity.