Nobody will tell you how many Indians pay for streaming

Punjab, Oct. 13 -- Nobody will tell you how many Indians pay for streaming. JioHotstar has not disclosed a paid-subscriber figure since May 2025, when it said 280 million. Netflix stopped reporting country numbers. Third-party estimates for JioHotstar's paid base currently range from 100 million to over 300 million.

The switch from subscribers to users

JioHotstar now reports audience size. Shareholders were told it averaged 451 million monthly active users in FY26, up 48 per cent year on year, with quarterly disclosures putting the figure near 500 million by March 2026.

Monthly active users and paying subscribers are different things, and the substitution is deliberate. MAU counts everyone who opened the app, including people watching fr...