Consolidated streamer JioHotstar went live in India today, merging two of the country’s popular SVODs—JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar. Formed last year by Disney’s Star India and Viacom18, the US$8.5-billion joint-venture is owned by Mumbai-based Reliance Industries.

With an entertainment catalogue of more than 300,000 hours, JioHotstar says it will reach up to 500 million users, which is a dominant share of the Indian market. The streamer is led by three c-suite executives at JioStar: Kevin Vaz (CEO of entertainment), Kiran Mani (CEO of digital) and Sanjog Gupta (CEO of sports).

In addition to housing most of Disney’s catalogue (including top kids franchises like Bluey, Inside Out and Frozen), the platform has also acquired titles from Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO, NBCUniversal and Paramount. 

On the kids front specifically, JioHotstar offers a mix of international franchises (such as Kung Fu Panda, Home Alone and Doraemon) and local programming (including Disney titles like tween sitcom Best of Luck Nikki and CG-animated series The Legend of Hanuman). 

The platform is available at two pricepoints—a quarterly rate of US$1.71 for an ad-based tier, and a monthly membership of US$3.45 that’s ad-free. JioHotstar is currently operating on what was previously the Disney+ Hotstar app. The plan is to phase out the JioCinema app once its memberships have expired, according to TechCrunch.

Affordability should help position the service for growth, along with its emphasis on live sports coverage (leveraging the popularity of cricket among Indian audiences) and music (a livestream of a Coldplay concert last month attracted 8.3 million views on Disney+ Hotstar). “By integrating AI-driven recommendations and offering [programming] in over 19 languages, we are personalizing content like never before,” Mani said in a release.