MUMBAI: It’s a winner! All we can do is doff our hats to Uday Shankar and his band of JioStar men. The vice-chairman of JioStar and his team,  early this morning, unveiled a new streaming service JioHotstar which simply blew you away.  

The logo – reminding of you of a distant  rising star - the colours, the tiles, the ease of navigation, the interactivity, the sheer breadth, the depth, and width of content (a lot has been spoken about the Disney, WBD, et al library, the top sports in the country) -  it’s all there, all one can expect from a best in class service.

Congratulatory messages from a  host of top  Hindi and regional cinema icons – led by Salman Khan -  on the launch of JioHotstar keep you watching, even the promo.

Netflix, and team Sarandos, you'd  better wake up, and smell the coffee, you will have a battle of perception on your hands of an Indian company being able to create a global gold standard streamer.

What should also worry the rest of the streamers is the spawning of Sparks – an area reserved for creator-led content. There’s shows from  Zakir Khan, Fukra insaan, there’s Munawar Faruqui, Urfi Javed, Harsh  Gujral, Ranveer Braar, and Rahul Dua. And mind you unlike in the past, the content is good with game shows, dating shows etc.

Hey, before anyone thinks we are being paid to be euphoric about JioHotstar, here’s a confession: we are not.

Our review of the new JioHotstar is based on genuine pride that a streamer of this quality can emerge from India. One that can rival global players, in terms of design, tech, ease of use, and of course that most important element content!

In fact, if there’s one hassle with the new JioHotstar it is that there’s  a problem of plenty, there’s too much too much content. But India is a land of diversity and the attempt is to cater to that. Good search and recommendation engines can really make the surfeit of content not appear like a problem at all!