JioStar to invest ₹32,000 crore in FY26, with sharper focus on Indian content and sports: Uday Shankar

Mumbai: JioStar will invest ₹32,000 crore in the current fiscal (FY26), up 7% from last year’s ₹30,000 crore investment in the area of content, confirmed vice chairman of the streaming platform, Uday Shankar.
“In 2024, the two companies (Viacom18 (a subsidiary of Reliance Industries) and Disney’s Star India) spent ₹25,000 crore on content alone. In FY25 that number went to ₹30,000 crore and the number next year will be over ₹32,000 to ₹33,000 crore,” Uday Shankar, vice chairman, JioStar, said during a fireside chat on WAVES summit in Mumbai.
In the past three years, the company has spent more than $10 billion. Talking about where the investment is going, Shankar revealed that the entire amount is invested in content curation in the Indian market, with a strong focus on sports entertainment.

“When an Indian media company is investing a dollar, it is investing entirely targeting the Indian consumer, their tastes, their requirements, and the recovery is also from India,” shared Shankar.
“When a global company spends that money, they more often than not they’re not looking at the Indian market and the Indian consumer as their primary target,” he added during his chat with Vivek Couteau, co-founder and CEO, Media Partners Asia.
Shankar reflected on the key milestones in India’s media and entertainment industry. He noted that streaming has seen a phenomenal rise and has been fuelled by deeper internet penetration and 4G and 5G expansion. Content has largely kept pace with this surge, particularly in areas like sports, where localisation into dialects (e.g., Bhojpuri, Haryanvi) has unlocked new audiences and revenues. However, reliance on imported content remains a limitation. True growth, Shankar argued, requires much more localised, India-specific content creation that reflects diverse cultural aspirations. India’s $30 billion screen entertainment market is poised for further expansion, potentially doubling in the next 15 years. Shankar identified increased content production tailored to Indian sensibilities, deeper distribution enabled by digital infrastructure, and investments in creative capacity as key drivers for growth of this market.