How JioHotstar manages complex partnerships

MUMBAI: From the outside, building partnerships at a streaming giant looks like a straightforward corporate checklist. You onboard a platform, sign a distribution deal, pop open the champagne, and move on. But according to JioStar senior vice president – partnerships Aditya Jhamb, that visible tip of the iceberg hides a far more complex, high-stakes operation.

“The role is about architecting ecosystems,” said Jhamb who handles subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) partnerships at JioHotstar (in a JioStar post on linkedin). “It’s aligning business strategy, consumer experience, technology, and monetization in a way that scales sustainably.” In an industry where technology and consumer attention shift by the minute, Jhamb operates in a state of constant reinvention.

His working week is a fluid, high-velocity scramble. One hour he is locked in long-term strategy discussions with top leadership; the next, he is deep in the trenches solving technical glitches with internal product teams. The highest-stakes calls are those that dictate multi-year reach and critical performance metrics, such as video viewer numbers across premium connected TVs (CTV) and smartphones. Jhamb relies on a mix of cold data, scenario mapping, and an intuition sharpened over 25 years in the business. The golden rule? Always back the long-term play over the quick, transactional win.

What goes on behind the curtain is a masterclass in corporate diplomacy. Deals fall apart not because partners disagree, but because internal teams stall. “The sheer amount of alignment required across product, tech, marketing, finance, and legal often goes unseen,” Jhamb explains. Orchestrating this cross-functional symphony quietly and repeatedly under brutal deadlines is what actually gets a contract across the finish line.

In the over-the-top (OTT) streaming universe, partnerships are fundamentally different from old-school media distribution. You are not just hawking a finished product to a cable operator; you are co-creating how a viewer discovers, accesses, and stays hooked on content. Crucially, because JioHotstar frequently owns the entire customer lifecycle through its telecom partners, the game has evolved far beyond mere user acquisition. The real battlefield is driving daily engagement and preventing subscription churn.

This requires a mental agility that Jhamb finds intellectually addictive. On any given afternoon, he must swap a “revenue hat” used for hard-nosed negotiations with telecom giants for an “efficiency and innovation hat” when huddling with smart-TV and mobile manufacturers. He calls this his sharpest skill: knowing exactly how a tweak in one corner of the digital ecosystem will ripple across the rest.

Since walking through the door at JioHotstar, Jhamb’s remit has expanded drastically. He has transitioned from driving basic distribution to charting integrated customer experiences and managing the mammoth scale of the platform’s subscription partnerships. He credits this trajectory to a culture of radical autonomy. Leaders do not hand down rigid playbooks; they expect independent, founder-level execution.

“Working in OTT partnerships feels like building bridges on a moving river,” says Jhamb. The currents of technology change fast, but the connections holding the platform together must remain ironclad. At JioHotstar, life feels like running a nimble startup, except you have the financial muscle and staggering ambition of India’s largest conglomerate backing your every move.