Slower growth pushed India's OTT platforms to rethink strategy in 2025

In 2025, India’s OTT industry expanded in reach, but slowing growth compelled platforms to re-evaluate their strategies.

According to Ormax Media’s 2025 estimates, India’s OTT audience crossed 601 million viewers, growing by just under 10% year-on-year, a clear deceleration compared to earlier years. Paid subscriptions continued to grow, while Connected TV usage surged to over 129 million users, up nearly 85%, signalling that OTT consumption was becoming more habitual, shared, and living-room centric.

At the same time, rising content costs, increasing competition for attention, and growing subscription fatigue meant that scale alone was no longer a guarantee of engagement or revenue. Advertiser interest in OTT strengthened, but expectations around addressability, measurement, and brand-safe environments also grew sharper, putting additional pressure on platforms to refine both product and proposition. 

As a result, 2025 became less about who could launch the most content and more about who could build durable viewing habits, clearer identities, and sustainable business models in a crowded streaming ecosystem.

It was against this backdrop that OTT players began rethinking everything from platform design and content mix to monetisation choices and regional priorities.

Platforms reframe their core proposition

Across the spectrum, platforms began reassessing what they stood for and who they were building for. The emphasis moved from volume to experience.

For JioHotstar, the merger of Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema into JioHotstar marked a structural shift, prompting the platform to rethink not just content scale but the very design and role of the platform itself.

A JioHotstar spokesperson described the year as a fundamental inflection point for the industry itself. They said, “2025 will be remembered as a turning point for India’s media and entertainment industry. The conversation moved beyond scale or volume of content to a more fundamental question of relevance, accessibility, and everyday utility.”

This thinking shaped JioHotstar’s formation, with the platform built to serve users across languages, regions, devices, and levels of digital familiarity, supported by technology-led discovery and personalisation.

This move was not limited to large platforms. Mid-sized and regional players, operating with tighter margins and clearer audience cohorts, were also quicker to internalise the shift. 

Pratap Jain, Founder & CEO of ChanaJor OTT, echoed the industry-wide correction underway: “2025 emerged as a year of course correction for the Indian OTT industry. The focus moved away from aggressive expansion towards building sustainable businesses.”

For ChanaJor, this meant prioritising clear positioning and loyal viewership over chasing scale, a sign that OTT platforms were increasingly valuing depth of engagement.

Similarly, Dhruvin Shah, Founder & CEO of JOJO, framed 2025 as a year of clarity rather than compromise: “The focus clearly shifted from scale at any cost to sustainable growth, differentiated content, and sharper audience targeting.”

Relevance, habitual engagement, and clarity of purpose replaced raw reach as the defining metrics of success.

While platforms clarified their purpose and audience focus, the question of monetisation loomed large, forcing platforms to confront their revenue models.

Monetisation reality check

If content strategy matured in 2025, monetisation faced its toughest questions yet. Subscription growth plateaued across parts of the market, while ad-supported viewing gained momentum, especially outside metros.

Anuja Trivedi, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Shemaroo Entertainment, captured this tension. “The two biggest winners today operate at opposite ends of the spectrum. YouTube with a clear AVOD model from day one, and Netflix with the strongest content platform and a pure SVOD approach.”

She shared that business viability and monetisation models will now need to evolve quickly as the consumer shift towards digital continues rapidly.

For ShemarooMe, the biggest areas of investment have continued to be the fundamentals. Trivedi shared that content remains the core reason consumers come to the platform, and marketing continues to be critical for acquiring new users. The most significant pivot for ShemarooMe this year, she added, has been technology. As consumers become increasingly digitally savvy, the platform’s role is to make their journeys simpler and content discovery more intuitive.

From a large-scale ecosystem perspective, JioHotstar’s spokesperson stressed that engagement in 2025 was not driven by a single lever but by the strength of a diversified content and access ecosystem. While marquee sports events continued to act as the primary entry point, users increasingly stayed on for a wider mix of international series, daily television, non-fiction, originals, and creator-led programming.

Access to a large catalogue spanning live television, films, reality formats, and international studios ensured that the platform could cater to different moments, moods, and viewing preferences across the day. This diversity of choice helped convert episodic spikes in viewership into more habitual consumption, strengthening engagement across both free and paid audiences.

“This diversity of content and choice translated into scale and stickiness, helping JioHotstar build a strong and sustained user base,” they said.

Meanwhile, Sushilkumar Agrawal, Founder & CEO, Ultra Media & Entertainment Group, highlighted how platforms responded to subscription fatigue with flexibility.

He said, “We explored different & unique subscription models like yearly, half-monthly, quarterly & Freemium formats to address the price-sensitive and subscription-fatigued consumers.”

These developments underline that 2025 was a year where platforms balanced the dual imperatives of attracting audiences and generating sustainable revenue, whether through ad-supported models, subscription innovation, or a mix of both. 

While platforms worked on monetisation strategies to build sustainable businesses in a maturing market, it was regional and language-led content outside metro areas that became a major engine of growth and engagement.

Regional is the centre

Perhaps the most defining shift of 2025 was the unequivocal rise of regional and language-led content as the industry’s growth engine.

This trend aligned closely with Kutingg, Balaji Telefilms’ OTT app’s strategic direction. Sanjay Dwivedi, Group CEO & CFO, stated:
“Regional content and language diversity shifted from being an opportunity to becoming a strategic imperative for our growth.”

With expansion beyond metros accelerating, Balaji leaned into multi-language, culturally rooted storytelling.

Agrawal, emphasised the broader industry impact. He noted that over 65% of OTT viewership now comes from Tier II and Tier III cities, where local language content is in high demand, and that regional languages account for over 50% of paid OTT subscriptions, led by markets such as Marathi, South Indian languages, and Bangla. 

“Platforms are also focusing on culturally rooted stories, identifying "mass-niche" content that resonates with local audiences. AI-driven dubbing and subtitling are also enabling cross-language content expansion. This focus on regional content is expected to continue in 2026, with predictions that regional language content will exceed 55% of total OTT consumption,” Agrawal added.

Echoing this focus on audience-centricity, a JioHotstar spokesperson said, “Viewers are increasingly choosing content over platforms, authenticity over star power, and convenience over habit. They expect flexibility in how, when and where they watch: whether on mobile, connected TV or across shared screens. Platforms that respect these choices and build experiences around them will define the next phase of growth.” 

As 2025 draws to a close, the Indian OTT industry has clearly shifted from rapid expansion to purposeful growth. Platforms are no longer chasing sheer scale; instead, they are building deeper engagement, stronger habits, and clearer identities, while balancing monetisation with audience relevance. Regional and language-led content has emerged as a powerful growth lever, reflecting the country’s linguistic diversity and the rise of Tier II and Tier III markets.

Looking ahead to 2026, success will hinge on the ability to personalise experiences, innovate monetisation models, and serve viewers across languages, devices, and contexts. The story of 2025 is one of maturation: the industry is evolving from a growth-stage sprint into a more deliberate, audience-centric, and strategically focused media ecosystem.