iWorld
We are fundamentally changing storytelling: Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan
Ajit Mohan is not your flashy kind of guy. Quiet, unassuming normally, he opens up and the words flows easy when it comes to talking about his pet project—the fast-growing Star India-owned OTT service Hotstar. Over the past three years, he has gradually—with the support of Uday Shankar and Sanjay Gupta and, of course, the Murdochs—grown the service, setting new download, watch time and quality records.
With huge money riding behind the cricket rights that Star India has acquired, Mohan is going to play a crucial role in helping monetise what some are calling very expensive acquisitions. Moreover, the global big boys are gearing up to carve out huge slices of India’s one-billion-plus mobile populace. Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube and JioTV are the majors with deep pockets that will pull out all the stops in terms of content—local and global originals—to gain traction. But Mohan, while respectful of the other players, is quite clear that he and his team will be digging in their heels and will battle without yielding any quarter.
He was in Bali at APOS and he had a conversation with MPA’s Vivek Couto on stage. Excerpts from the interview:
So, what’s the latest that has happened that has got the team excited?
We crossed 7.1 million concurrent users last week. We are gunning for the largest number of concurrent users online. To the best that we know, it is eight million. And that is the number we are aiming for in this IPL. At 10 million, many elements of the internet ecosystem will be tested and challenged. We want to get to eight million before we get to 10 million. If I circle back three years ago when we launched Hotstar, 1.5 million was what was testing what the internet ecosystem could take. I think a lot of different parts of the networks are really geared up. I think we are a much better tech company than we were three years ago. I do believe there is a path to 10 million but I don’t want to jinx it.
Tell us a little bit about your journey at Hotstar.
A good friend of mine who works for one of the global tech companies told me in 2014 when I was about to take up the position: “Many broadcasters have gone down this path. You should try it. Because it’s good to try things in life. But in six months, you will probably figure out that this is probably not for a media company.”
And, for me, if I step back and think about what’s happening in Asia, a few things stand out. I think the global tech majors have done an amazing job in shaping many markets. But I think they have also been quite successful in seeding this narrative that there is no future for old media companies. We are establishing that, especially at Hotstar, that the narrative is not true. That if you really build a service that has its DNA in storytelling and you build technological capabilities around it. I think, the future is very much for people who are grounded in stories but who have the aggression and forward-looking approach in building real technical capabilities. And I genuinely believe that one of the myths that has been broken is the belief that it would be short-form content that would work on the mobile. And most of the world is seeing the internet for the first time on a mobile. I think that has been turned on its head. The consumers’ appetite is for great stories; it’s for curated long-form content, the kind of stories that have worked for the last 40-50 or 400 years. And for me that is the big proof of concept that Hotstar has provided for the rest of the world that it is for us to shape this future. That we are very much at the centre of the story.
What is the transformation that is taking place at Hotstar?
While our DNA is in storytelling, we were quite conscious that we needed to become a technology company. Over the last three years, we have worked to build serious technological capabilities inside the company. I don’t think it is possible to outsource technology or to build a service by a patchwork of technology partners. Today, we have more than a 100 engineers who work at Hotstar. We are looking at doubling that in the next six to nine months. And, for me, even the scale that we are able to do today is because we have people inside the company, who are tuning technology to address the scale that’s being driven by the demand from consumers.
I think the second point is I do believe that great stories shine, one way in which we have been different than even some of the pioneers in streaming is we did not look at stories from the lens of “it’s the same content and it is on a different screen. Or it’s the same content that’s on broadcast that is available on demand.” I think we have looked at it saying we can change the format of storytelling. We can create new experiences. As an example, in cricket, what we did was we created a new proposition where consumers could come and watch a match but they could also play a game while watching the match. And more than 20 million people who have taken part in the watch and play feature. So, all of a sudden, the proposition is not watching the same content, it’s fundamentally changing storytelling. That is core to what we are doing at Hotstar.
Unlike other tech companies in the world, I don’t think we have the desire to do everything. We have not turned around and said look now we are really doing well in one genre, now let’s get into food; and let’s be a food app, an ecommerce app. We believe the biggest opportunity is in video. And it fundamentally is creating experiences around video, and we have obsessively been focused on doing that one thing really well.
What kind of content is being consumed nowadays? Is it primarily sport?
We have been more vocal about the sports numbers, but the reality is that most of our consumption is on TV shows and movies. Then there are days when there is a large cricket match, the scale is dramatic for that day. But if I look at it over a year, then 75-80 per cent of our watch time still comes from outside of sports. We’re not a sports platform. What’s special is that we are bringing together TV shows, movies, sports, news—all on a single platform. In less than one year of introducing news on our platform, we are already one of the largest video destinations for news in India.
One of the interesting challenges we have is we have made the choice to put everything in a single service and I think that’s a challenge some of our peers may not have; we have a lot of diverse content. And as much as one of our objectives is to match the right content to the right users, one of the challenges we face every day is the risk of alienation. Because India is not a single country with the appetite for the same stories everywhere. For instance, if we serve a Tamil movie to someone whose language is Hindi, you are signalling to the user that you don’t understand him.
So, we have an interesting technology challenge of leveraging the scale of bringing everything together and yet create a platform that a set of users feels is deeply personal and intuitive.
We are finding that at the beginning of Hotstar a lot of people were coming in and looking at it as a catch-up destination. They would see an episode of a TV show if they did not watch it on TV. More and more people were introduced to the proposition of the platform, to start looking at it as a primary screen. Today, hardcore users are watching as much time in a month or more in a month as much as the core user of that television show on broadcast TV. It no longer is a catch-up destination. For a lot of people, it is the primary screen.
What is the demographic of the user today?
Maybe it is no longer conventional wisdom. There is a belief that content is for millennials, whoever they are, and in Asia almost every one is a millennial, it is a very young audience. The content on TV would be very different from what works for on demand or on the mobile. The average age in India is 26-27, they are young audiences. What works on TV works well on Hotstar as well.
I think it is fundamentally about great stories. There is no format for millennials that anyone has cracked so far that stands out. The second thing that does stand out— maybe because we have cracked some of the classical streams of distribution in the cable and satellite industry—we are not seeing that people are consuming one set of content. We have consumers who are watching Game of Thrones as well as a Tamil movie or Homeland and a Hindi TV show. I think some of the stereotypes that have been created in broadcast television is that there are users for a certain kind of an Indian TV show; there are users for an American TV show.
We are finding that those boundaries, those stereotypes don’t exist. People’s appetite does not seem to conform to the constraints we have set from a distribution point of view in the old world. We are seeing, on average, between 45 and 60 minutes a day in terms of people coming in and spending time. And that’s where I think of the constraints of three years ago when data costs were high especially relative to what they were used to paying for pay TV and the bandwidth was very patchy. That’s changed: there is no fear of data charges anymore. If you leave aside what we in India call masala content, our belief is that we are doing watch time every day on Hotstar maybe the same or more than what YouTube does in India. For me, it is a big shift from what the environment was three to four years ago.
How’s the advertiser client looking at you following your direct to brand strategy, which has potentially cut out the agency?
The proposition that we have offered to the advertisers for the past couple of years, we believe it works from a consumer point of view as well. Brands have been built on TV because consumers were paying attention. And in the transition from linear television to video-on-demand services, a lot of advertisers got excited about the great data that was available: you can slice and dice audiences, you could target specific audiences. But I think what was lost in that process and I think now there is consciousness of that: you had a lot of awareness about of your users, you could play around on dashboard, but those consumers are not paying enough attention. It is difficult to pay attention to a two-minute video when you are scrolling around stuff.
And, therefore, our big pitch to advertisers was this marries the best of what worked for TV, real engagement, with the audience understanding that comes with digital. And if I bring together the best of both worlds, we have a proposition for you as an advertiser that is fairly unique.
It’s not been easy. I think the tech companies have done a fabulous job of building that— some of them only self-serving. It’s been our mission to tell people that it is possible to build brands on digital by bringing the power of engagement and data.
We launched the Hotstar ad server a few weeks ago that allows smaller advertisers to connect with us directly. Our objective is not to cut out the agencies. Agencies have been great partners for us. They have had huge belief in what we are doing. But I believe Google and Facebook have done a phenomenal job; you do have to have a platform for smaller advertisers who may not have the scale of the marketing spend or even the capabilities to hire these types of agencies. It is early days and we are saying that a small advertiser in a small town of India or an early-stage start up should have the same access to Hotstar as the largest marketer, which is Unilever.
We have been successful in commanding a premium because of the advertiser proposition I spoke about. But I think as the market expands dramatically, I think it is an open question where will CPMs land.
What is your view on subscription?
On the subscription side, just as there was skepticism that India was ready for online streaming, there is skepticism whether Indians will pay for it. And we are taking on the mantle and as a leader we are saying: if you create differentiated content, we do believe subscription can take off in India. And I think that party started with American shows and movies. We do believe that we have the best English proposition in India. We believe that the best American films and TV shows, and live sports and local TV shows being made available to users before they watch on TV, I think we are going at it a lot more aggressively. The early focus of the first three years was on building the platform, getting tech right, building up the scale. We have 15 million users this month, that is massive scale.
Gaming
India’s new online gaming rules take effect today, banning money games and creating a regulator
The rules, in force from today, separate e-sports from gambling and impose jail terms and stiff fines on violators
NEW DELHI: India’s online gaming sector woke up this morning to a new reality. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026, came into force today, May 1st, turning a year of legislative intent into enforceable law. The message from New Delhi is blunt: e-sports and social games are welcome; online money games are not.
The rules operationalise the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming (PROG) Act, passed by Parliament in August 2025. Together, they represent the most sweeping regulatory intervention India has made in its booming digital gaming market, one that generated Rs 23,200 crore in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 11 per cent to reach Rs 31,600 crore by 2027. The stakes, in every sense, could not be higher.
A sector out of control
The urgency behind the legislation is not hard to find. An estimated 45 crore Indians have been affected by online money gaming platforms, with losses exceeding Rs 20,000 crore. Addiction, financial ruin, money laundering, and suicides have all been linked to the sector. Seventy-seven per cent of the market’s revenues came from transaction-based games, a figure that made regulators deeply uneasy.
The government’s response, effective as of today, is categorical. Online money games, whether based on chance, skill, or any mix of the two, are banned outright. So is their advertising, promotion, and facilitation. Banks and payment processors are barred from handling related transactions. Unlawful platforms can be blocked under the Information
Technology Act, 2000.
The penalties are designed to sting. Offering or facilitating online money games can attract up to three years in jail and a fine of up to Rs 1 crore, or both. Repeat offenders face a minimum of three years, extendable to five, with fines between Rs 1 crore and Rs 2 crore. Advertising such games carries up to two years in prison and fines of up to Rs 50 lakh, with repeat violations attracting higher penalties still. Cyber cell officers at state and union territory levels, including at police station, district, and commissionerate levels, are empowered to investigate offences.
The new sheriff in town
At the centre of the new framework sits the Online Gaming Authority of India, a digital-first regulator constituted as an attached office of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, headquartered in Delhi. It is chaired by the additional secretary of MeitY and includes joint secretary-level representation from home affairs, finance, information and broadcasting, youth affairs and sports, and law and justice, a deliberately multi-sectoral design built for a complex sector.
The authority’s powers are broad. It will maintain and publish lists of online money games, investigate complaints, issue directions, orders, and codes of practice, hear appeals on user grievances, and coordinate with financial institutions and law enforcement to ensure effective and timely action.
Its decisions on game classification are to be completed within 90 days, a time-bound commitment that industry players have welcomed after years of regulatory ambiguity. Classification can be triggered by the authority acting on its own initiative, by an application from a service provider, or by a notification from the central government. Games will be assessed on objective factors: whether stakes are involved, whether players expect monetary winnings, the revenue model, and whether in-game assets can be monetised outside the game. The outcome is recorded in a determination order specific to the game and provider.
E-sports gets its moment
While the crackdown on money gaming dominates today’s headlines, the rules also carve out a structured path for e-sports and online social games. Registration, required when notified by the central government, applies to all games offered as e-sports and is based on factors including risk to users, scale, financial transactions, and country of origin. A successful application yields a digital certificate of registration with a unique number, valid for up to ten years. Service providers must display registration details, designate a point of contact, comply with data retention requirements, and follow directions on facilitating payments.
Online money games are explicitly ineligible for recognition or registration as e-sports under the National Sports Governance Act, 2025. The separation is deliberate, and the industry has noticed.
Akshat Rathee, co-founder and managing director of NODWIN Gaming, called today’s operationalisation “encouraging,” pointing to publisher-led registration of esports titles and a time-bound determination process as creating “much-needed certainty for all stakeholders.” He added that the “continued emphasis on clearly separating esports from online money gaming is critical in preserving the integrity of competitive gaming as a skill-driven discipline.” He described it as “a proud moment to see official acknowledgement of the broader benefits of responsible esports and gaming, from building confidence, discipline, and teamwork to creating new career pathways for young talent,” and said the framework sets “a strong foundation for the ecosystem to scale in a more structured and globally competitive manner.”
Animesh Agarwal, co-founder and chief executive of S8UL, was equally bullish. “This clarity is critical in unlocking investor confidence and attracting multi-genre brands, while also enabling organisations to take a more long-term view, whether in investing in talent, scaling teams, or building globally competitive formats,” he said, adding that it “strengthens trust among audiences and mainstream stakeholders, positioning esports not just as a sport, but as a fast-growing youth entertainment category in India.”
But Agarwal urged caution on several fronts. There remains limited clarity around financial frameworks, particularly in how esports earnings are treated by banks and financial institutions. A well-defined pathway for the formal recognition or registration of esports teams is still evolving, as are structured player protections. He also called for smoother visa processes for esports athletes competing in international tournaments and for government support in developing infrastructure, including bootcamps, training facilities, and access to high-performance equipment across titles.
Vishal Parekh, chief operating officer of CyberPowerPC India, pointed to downstream effects on education and careers. “With formal recognition and policy backing, colleges and institutions are more likely to take the sector seriously, whether through dedicated esports infrastructure, training programmes, or curriculum integration,” he said, adding that this helps students view gaming as a viable career spanning roles across competitive play, content, game development, and allied industries. He noted that as esports gains prominence in global multi-sport events, the framework strengthens India’s position in international competitive gaming, and called on the ecosystem to provide the right infrastructure and access to high-performance hardware to unlock opportunities in talent development and job creation.
Protecting users, one safeguard at a time
The rules introduce a layered system of user protections calibrated to the risk profile of each game. These include age verification, age gating, time restrictions, parental controls, user reporting tools, counselling support, and fair-play and integrity monitoring. Service providers must disclose their safety features and internal grievance mechanisms when applying for determination or registration.
A two-tier grievance redressal system sits atop these safeguards. Users who are dissatisfied with a platform’s resolution can escalate to the authority within 30 days. The authority aims to dispose of such appeals within a further 30 days. A second appeal lies before the secretary of MeitY, who must also endeavour to resolve matters within 30 days. Enforcement proceedings will be conducted in digital mode wherever possible, with cases targeted for resolution within 90 days from receipt of a complaint.
Penalties under the framework are proportionate, taking into account gain from non-compliance, loss to users, the gravity of the offence, and whether violations are recurring. Mitigation efforts by service providers will also be considered when determining penalties. All penalties imposed under the Act will be credited to the Consolidated Fund of India.
The money follows the rules
For investors and founders, the implications are immediate and significant. Sagar Nair, head of incubation at LVL Zero Incubator, a 100-day sprint designed to accelerate early-stage gaming startups across India, argues that with real-money gaming now prohibited, capital will shift “away from transaction-driven models toward content-led, IP-driven, and global-first gaming businesses.” He acknowledged trade-offs: for operators with exposure to real-money formats, the market becomes more restrictive in the near term. But he argued that by clearly separating esports and non-money gaming from online money gaming, “India is positioning itself as a hub for responsible, creative, and scalable game development.” The opportunity, he said, is “to view India not just as a monetisation-first market, but as a talent, IP, and scale market,” adding that “for founders and investors willing to adapt, this shift could ultimately strengthen India’s position in the global gaming landscape.”
The government frames the wider impact in equally ambitious terms: a boost to India’s creative economy and digital exports, new career pathways for young people, protection for families from predatory platforms, and a stronger voice in global digital governance. India, it argues, offers a model for other countries grappling with the same tensions between gaming’s economic promise and its social risks, one that shows innovation and strong safeguards need not be mutually exclusive.
Whether the framework delivers on those promises will depend on enforcement, always the hardest part. But from today, the architecture is firmly in place: a regulator with teeth, a classification system with deadlines, penalties designed to deter, and a clear dividing line between games that build careers and games that destroy finances. For a sector that has grown fast and governed itself loosely, May 1st, 2026 is the day the free ride ends.
