Hotstar is one of the leading online video streaming service in India. It is so popular in India because of the range of content it provides. Hotstar started its journey by giving all contents for free and made money via advertisement. However, later the company introduced the membership model in which it brings the Premium plan and recently the VIP plan.
The difference between the Premium and the Free plan are, First in the premium plan there is no ads plus include live channels. The live channels also include sports channels from where you could watch Cricket, Premier League & Formula 1.
Recently, we came to know about Disney Plus service which Disney is going to launch on November this year on US and other countries. Disney also reveals the monthly and yearly subscription cost of Disney+ service. The monthly subscription cost is $6.99 whereas the yearly one is $69.99.
Disney Plus comes at no extra cost with Hotstar Premium
Anyways, if you are a Hotstar Premium member you won’t have to pay any extra charge for Disney+ membership. This is because Disney plus came included with Hotstar premium membership from next year with no extra cost. Some of you might be thinking why Disney+ doesn’t charge with Hotstar members? Well, Hotstar is a subsidiary of Star India which in turn is a subsidiary of Disney.
Now, Instead of launching a separate streaming service Disney utilizes the Hotstar member database they already made. Note that In India Hotstar has approximately 300 million monthly active users. So, launching a separate streaming service and building such user base side by side also kicking the rivals is not an easy task to do. Therefore, Disney keep the hand of Hotstar to stream their content.
In India on the other hand Disney looks forward to dub movies and TV shows in popular languages like Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.
So, it clear now, which streaming service going to rule in India from year 2020. In my opinion Hotstar it is. Looking at its subscription price, the premium one cost Rs. 999 an year or Rs. 299 a month. In this price tag we able to watch Disney content as well. I have already written a post in which I mention about the content Disney Plus have.
Seems like Netflix, Amazon Prime and other Indian streaming service have to prepare more for the next year to compete with Hotstar.