Samsung TV Plus India expands to 200 Channels

The streaming war is getting crowded. Samsung TV Plus India is choosing a different lane: more channels, more regional flavour and no subscription bill.

The platform has expanded its Indian offering to 200 streaming TV channels, up from more than 50, marking a sharp broadening of its content proposition. The latest push comes through a partnership with NH Studioz, which adds Aashirwad TV and Thalaivar Hits to the line-up.

The significance of the move is less about the headline number and more about what Samsung is putting behind it. Connected TV is no longer simply a bigger screen for the same streaming catalogue. It is becoming a battleground for habit, discovery and increasingly specific audience tastes. Samsung TV Plus is leaning into that shift with genre-led and culturally familiar programming rather than relying only on broad entertainment.

Aashirwad TV is built around Hindi mythological and devotional programming, including Ramayana, Shree Ganesha and Om Namah Shivaay. Thalaivar Hits, meanwhile, taps the enormous cultural pull of Tamil cinema, bringing films featuring Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan, including Kai Kodukkum and Thambikku Entha Ooru.

That pairing is telling. One channel is rooted in stories with intergenerational familiarity; the other is built around cinema icons with an exceptionally loyal following. Together, they give Samsung TV Plus something that a generic catalogue can struggle to manufacture: immediate recognition.

The strategy also plays neatly into the economics of free ad-supported streaming television, or FAST. Samsung TV Plus comes pre-installed on Samsung Smart TVs and offers content at no additional cost. Globally, the service has more than 100m monthly active users, while its Indian portfolio now spans entertainment, movies, news, sports and regional content.

For Samsung, scale is therefore becoming a content proposition in its own right. Moving from more than 50 channels to 200 in India signals an attempt to make TV Plus less of a supplementary feature and more of a destination within the connected-TV ecosystem. Kunal Mehta, general manager and head of business development, Samsung TV Plus India, described the expansion as part of the company’s effort to offer greater choice across genres and generations.

NH Studioz has its own reason to play. The partnership gives the studio a route deeper into FAST while allowing it to package familiar Indian intellectual property into focused, always-on channels. Shreyans Hirawat, head of film business and innovation, NH Studioz, said the new launches build on the company’s existing Hindi movie and music live-streaming channels and represent the next phase of its FAST expansion.

That makes the partnership more strategic than a simple content deal. Samsung gets differentiated programming that can strengthen its channel proposition. NH Studioz gets another distribution engine for a library that can be organised around recognisable genres, stars and cultural touchstones.

The broader opportunity is clear. As viewers become accustomed to switching between on-demand platforms, short-form video and traditional television, the winning connected-TV propositions may not be the ones with the biggest catalogue alone. They will be the ones that make discovery effortless and give audiences a reason to stay.

Samsung TV Plus is betting that 200 channels, backed by familiar stories and regional icons, can do exactly that. Its recognition as CTV Platform of the Year at the BCS Ratna Awards adds another marker of the platform’s growing presence in India’s connected-TV ecosystem.

The real test will be whether channel scale converts into viewing habit. For now, Samsung has made its intent unmistakable: in India’s fast-expanding connected-TV market, free television is not standing still. It is getting bigger, sharper and considerably more local.