Billion, realme TechLife launch CloudTV’s thunderOS smart TVs in India

MUMBAI: India’s television industry has spent years running on operating systems built with someone else’s living room in mind. CloudTV thinks it has fixed that, and it has found two willing partners to prove the point. Billion and realme TechLife have become the first smart TV brands in the country to carry thunderOS, CloudTV’s newest CTS-certified operating system, with the partnership going live today and the televisions landing on Flipkart from the same day.

The timing is no coincidence. With the festive season bearing down, consumer electronics companies are jostling for shelf space and eyeballs, and a fresh operating system arriving with two brand partners at once is designed to make a splash exactly when Indian households are shopping for new screens. CloudTV is not a newcomer to this game either. The company already powers over 8 million devices and reaches more than 16 million viewers across India, positioning it as the country’s homegrown answer to the likes of Android TV and Tizen.

thunderOS itself is a fairly loaded proposition. It bundles 350 plus live channels, 130 plus OTT and other apps, 45 plus gaming apps, browsing support, DVB-S satellite connectivity and 800 plus free-to-air channels spanning news, entertainment and sport, all wrapped into a platform that is CTS-certified and supports proper versions of YouTube and Amazon Prime Video rather than sideloaded workarounds. At the centre of the experience sits Bolt, CloudTV’s AI voice assistant, which handles search, navigation and even general trivia, alongside features such as SmartAudio, which adjusts sound to genre, personalised recommendations, continue watching and a unified content search that hunts across multiple OTT apps from one interface. There is also a kids mode for curated content and a PC mode that turns the television into a larger screen for browsing and editing.

For Billion, the tie-up slots neatly into a brand built around accessible pricing and pan-India availability, adding a more capable smart TV layer without disturbing the value positioning. For realme TechLife, it plugs into a wider ecosystem of streaming devices, audio products and smart home appliances, extending CloudTV’s reach into a lineup that already spans several connected categories.

Abhijeet Rajpurohit, co-founder and chief operating officer at CloudTV, framed the launch as evidence that Indian consumers and manufacturers needed something built specifically for them rather than adapted from elsewhere, pointing to deep content discovery, voice-first navigation and the ability to move between on-demand and linear television, gaming and AI-driven information access on a single screen. The partnerships with Billion and realme TechLife, he said, show that made-in-India technology can be scalable, efficient and premium all at once.

The broader bet is on connected TV adoption in India, which has been climbing steadily as smart TV penetration rises and viewers demand more personalised, app-based experiences. CloudTV is wagering that a certified, feature-rich, homegrown operating system, offered through brands already known for value, is the fastest route to scale in a market still working out what a smart television is actually meant to do.