Jio and Disney Are Rewriting the Global Entertainment Playbook: Mukesh Ambani
Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani said Jio's collaboration with Disney marks the beginning of a new era in digital storytelling. "We have built JioHotstar with the vision of matching even exceeding the reach of top creators of entertainment around the world", Ambani wrote in his keynote address at WAVES 2025.
Ambani, the country's richest man, stated that JioHotstar will offer a platform for India's and the world's best and brightest talent. "Its technology stack is unrivalled", he stated.
The RIL chairman stated that Jio has made a pioneering contribution to India's entertainment and digital revolution by bringing high-speed internet within reach of everyone and at affordable prices. "With JioCinema, we have set viewership records, transformed IPL viewing, and established immersive, multi-language, interactive sports viewing as a global norm", he stated.
Ambani declared that India's world-class digital infrastructure, founded on 5G, would soon be upgraded to 6G. The 1.2 billion mobile phones in India are potentially 1.2 billion screens, on which the user can consume entertainment and even distribute user-generated content, he stated.
Stands today among the world's most populous country. In a few years from now, our economy will be the world's third largest. This could turn India into the world's biggest media and entertainment market. Just consider the figures. 1.4 billion creators and consumers, with an average age of 29. That's not a number. It's the face of a demographic, economic and creative superpower".
Indian VFX is now driving Hollywood blockbusters, RIL chairman declared. "We create several million hours of content annually movies, TV shows, music, sports, short-form, long-form, live and immersive content. We are multilingual, multi-format, and multi-platform by design", he added.
"Artificial Intelligence and other new digital technologies are turning out to be much more disruptive to the creative sector, as per Ambani. The technologies are reshaping the whole value chain right from the creation of content to distribution and monetisation. AI solutions are breaking down dream and reality barriers, imagination and execution barriers", stated Ambani.
They can make great content a thousand times more engaging… and also reach them at the same time to hundreds of millions of screens in movie theaters, living rooms and on mobile devices and desktops across geographies and languages. What AI is doing to entertainment these days is a million times more transformative than when silent camera and cinema was bringing cinema to masses a hundred years back. "In this rapidly changing situation, India has virtually unbeatable strengths. The first is content; the second is demography; and the third is technology leadership", he further added.
"We are in an age of Global Media Renaissance when two tectonic shifts have transformed the topography of creative industries around the world. The first is geo-economic and the second is technological. The economic clout of the Global South, which represents approximately 85% of the world's population, is growing very fast", Ambani stated, and this implies, most of the production and consumption of media and entertainment products will now begin to happen in Asia, Africa and South America.
