AI in Indian Streaming: How Local Platforms and Media Giants Leverage AI
Streaming Gets Smarter: Exploring India’s AI-Driven Shift
Hey Streamers 👋,
A warm welcome to the 88th edition of the “Streaming in India” newsletter, your weekly news digest about streaming players, OTT trends, and analyses. If you are not already a subscriber, please sign up and join thousands of others who receive it directly in their inbox every Wednesday.
Agenda
AI in Indian Streaming: How Local Platforms and Media Giants Leverage AI
AI-Powered Personalization & Recommendations
AI for Localization: Dubbing, Subtitles and Beyond
AI in Content Creation and Production
AI in Marketing, Advertising and Monetization
And….Action!
AI in Indian Streaming: How Local Platforms and Media Giants Leverage AI
Artificial intelligence has quickly become a game-changer for India’s streaming video industry. From OTT platforms like Netflix India, JioHotstar, and ZEE5 to traditional media networks like Star, Sony, and Viacom18, companies are weaving AI into many aspects of their operations. In just the last couple of years, publicly disclosed use-cases show AI enhancing content discovery, personalizing viewer experiences, localizing content into diverse languages, streamlining production, and even boosting ad revenues. This analysis looks at how Indian streamers and media companies are using AI across the board – focusing on recent developments – to stay competitive in a fast-evolving market.
AI-Powered Personalization & Recommendations
One of AI’s most widespread applications in streaming is personalized content recommendation. Global giants set the tone – Netflix’s machine learning–driven recommendation engine, for example, is famously effective: around 75% of what users watch on Netflix comes from algorithmic recommendations, which Netflix estimates saves over $1 billion per year by reducing subscriber churn [theaitrack.com]. In India, both international and homegrown platforms leverage similar AI-driven recommendation systems to keep viewers hooked.
Indian OTT services like ZEE5 and JioHotstar have invested heavily in personalization. ZEE5’s Chief Business Officer has noted that advanced AI algorithms analyze users’ viewing patterns and real-time behavior to deliver “hyper-personalized content recommendations” that reflect each viewer’s unique tastes [financialexpress.com]. By mining data on watch history and preferences across its 76+ million active users, ZEE5’s AI helps each user discover relevant shows and movies from its vast library. JioHotstar likewise crunches massive real-time data streams to tailor suggestions – whether recommending a new Bollywood film or a highlight clip from last night’s cricket match – based on each viewer’s past engagement. In fact, during live sports events, JioHotstar’s platform analyzes what each fan enjoys to personalize the experience: stats overlays for the data-hungry fans, multi-camera angles for those who like to explore, and curated replays or interviews you might have missed. The goal is an intuitive viewing experience where the app surfaces exactly what you’re most likely to enjoy, keeping you engaged longer.
Under the hood, these personalization engines use machine learning models that segment users into micro-clusters and continuously refine predictions of what someone will watch next. They even adapt presentation – for example, Netflix and other platforms famously use AI to test and swap thumbnails or promotional art for each title to maximize clicks. All these AI-driven tweaks add up to a more sticky user experience: content feels tailored to you, which increases satisfaction and reduces the temptation to churn away to a competitor.
AI for Localization: Dubbing, Subtitles and Beyond
Perhaps nowhere is India’s streaming landscape more directly impacted by AI than in content localization. India’s diversity of languages means that dubbing and subtitling content into regional tongues is critical for reach – and AI is now accelerating this process dramatically. A prime example is Eros Now, which in 2022 announced it had become the world’s first streaming service to fully automate subtitling for its entire catalog using AI. By collaborating with Google Cloud’s AI team, Eros built a model (trained on vast amounts of subtitle data) to generate accurate subtitles in multiple languages at near-human quality. The initial rollout focused on Arabic subtitles to cater to the huge Middle Eastern fanbase for Bollywood content.
According to Eros, this AI-driven subtitling slashed turnaround time – what used to take human subtitlers 48 hours per film can now be done in seconds – enabling faster and wider release of content with subtitles. The company noted that solving challenges like gendered terms and varied punctuation across languages took months of refining the AI, but the result is a system that dramatically boosts accessibility of Indian films globally.
Beyond subtitles, AI-powered dubbing is emerging as a game-changer for making content multilingual. Star Sports (Disney Star) – a major sports broadcaster whose content also appears on JioHotstar – made headlines during IPL 2024 by using AI voice technology to offer commentary in multiple languages without needing separate human commentators. In an industry first, Star Sports introduced an AI-driven translation feature that allows its English-speaking international commentators to be heard speaking Hindi in their own voices.
^^ A clip of Steve Smith praising Virat Kohli’s batting in pitch-perfect Hindi went viral, stunning fans and showing the potential of AI voice translation [made together with ElevenLabs]. This made for a mind-bending experience – Hindi-speaking fans could suddenly hear overseas commentators like Matthew Hayden or Stuart Broad “directly” addressing them in Hindi, as if those stars were bilingual. Star Sports’ use of this tech dramatically lowers language barriers, letting broadcasters scale up to 12+ commentary languages to cater to India’s diverse cricket audience without hiring entire commentary teams for each language.
Streaming giants are also exploring AI dubbing for movies and series. Globally, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have begun using AI-driven dubbing to expand the multilingual reach of their originals. This often involves synthetic voices that mimic the original actors, but speak localized dialogue – allowing, say, a Spanish series to have a Hindi or Tamil dub that retains the original actors’ vocal qualities. In India, major studios are eyeing this tech for films too. Abu Dhabi’s AI firm G42 recently revealed that a leading Bollywood production house is keen to use AI dubbing so that superstars like Shah Rukh Khan’s own voice can be used for Tamil or Telugu dubs of their films. Keeping the actor’s real voice (just translated) could greatly improve audience acceptance of dubbed content. The future of localization in Indian streaming will likely see more such AI voice-cloning, real-time translations, and automated captions – making premium content instantly accessible in any language. This is especially crucial as platforms chase the next 100 million viewers from non-English speaking demographics.
AI in Content Creation and Production
Indian media companies are also starting to tap AI to create and edit content more efficiently. A notable example is ZEE5’s experimentation with generative AI to support their content creators. The CTO of ZEE5 revealed in 2023 that the platform is piloting large language models (LLMs) for script writing assistance [analyticsindiamag.com]. In practice, this means AI might help draft story outlines or dialogues for upcoming shows – giving writers a creative springboard or helping generate alternate plot ideas.
While ZEE5 did not disclose which shows are using AI-generated scripts, the CTO hinted that “if everything goes according to plan, we might continue utilizing LLM models in script writing” for content development. This suggests an openness to AI co-writing episodes or at least aiding the brainstorming process for new series. Additionally, ZEE5 acknowledged that many of its developers and creators use tools like GitHub Copilot (an AI coding assistant) to speed up tasks behind the scenes. Generative AI is also being eyed for producing marketing creatives – memes, short-form videos, social media posts – at scale. ZEE5’s team noted that AI-generated “meaningful creatives [and] memes” have helped expand audience engagement around their shows online [financialexpress.com]. In an era where streaming platforms must constantly promote content on digital channels, having AI churn out quick promo videos or meme templates provides a valuable boost to the marketing pipeline.
Another area of content creation transformed by AI is the generation of highlights and edits from live events. Sports streaming, in particular, benefits hugely from automation here. Traditionally, creating a highlight reel of a cricket or football match required a team of editors working after the match. Now, startups and in-house AI tools can do this in real time. For instance, Mumbai-based startup VideoVerse (formerly known for its Magnifi platform) offers an AI-powered system that detects key moments in sports videos and auto-produces highlight reels almost instantly. Using computer vision and deep learning, such systems recognize events like wickets falling or goals scored by analyzing crowd noise, on-screen graphics, and players’ reactions. JioHotstar and other Indian sports streamers have leveraged these tools to post highlight clips within minutes of a big moment – sometimes even during a live match. AI can even auto-generate captions and format these clips for social media on the fly, so that a stunning last-over finish in the IPL can be trending on X moments after it happens, driving viewers back to the platform. This kind of AI-accelerated post-production is becoming a competitive necessity.
ZEE5, for example, shared that it creates tens of thousands of short video reels and snippets every month for shows streaming on its platform and social media– a volume only feasible with AI assistance. By processing 50+ hours of content daily, ZEE5’s algorithms automatically generate promo clips and episode summaries that keep fans engaged. All of this automation frees up human creators to focus on higher-level creative tasks while machine learning handles the repetitive editing and clipping work at superhuman speed.
Even in the film and music production side, Indian creatives have begun embracing AI. In 2023, maverick director Ram Gopal Varma announced he will use only AI-generated music in his upcoming films’ soundtracks, via his RGV DN digital music venture. And major studios are dabbling in AI for VFX and planning – Eros, for instance, partnered with Epic Games to use the Unreal Engine (with real-time rendering, some of which involves AI) in virtual production of movies. While these are early forays, they signal an industry willingness to adopt cutting-edge AI if it can streamline production workflows or open new creative possibilities. At the same time, there’s caution among industry veterans about over-reliance on AI – as seen in Hollywood and Bollywood debates – to ensure that human creativity and intuition remain at the core of storytelling. Nonetheless, the last year has demonstrated that Indian content production is starting to lean on AI: from writing rooms to edit studios, algorithms are becoming collaborators.
AI in Marketing, Advertising and Monetization
For India’s many ad-supported streaming platforms, AI is proving vital in boosting advertising revenue and marketing effectiveness. One of the most publicized examples is JioHotstar’s partnership with Silicon Valley startup Moloco to power advertising on the OTT platform. During the IPL 2023 streaming, it faced the daunting task of serving billions of ad impressions to a peak of 32 million concurrent viewers – a scale unimaginable without smart automation. Moloco’s machine learning–driven ad serving tech rose to the occasion: it delivered targeted ads seamlessly to those 32 million simultaneous users and helped Jio monetize the massive viewership without crashes.
This multi-year partnership, announced in early 2024, is using Moloco’s advanced ML algorithms for real-time price optimization and yield management of JioHotstar’s ad inventory. In simple terms, the AI analyzes viewer data and advertiser bids to decide which ad to show to which user at what time to maximize both ad relevance and revenue. JioHotstar’s Chief Product and Technology Officer noted that by using Moloco’s AI-driven infrastructure, they unlocked “new monetization opportunities” while ensuring ads ran smoothly even at IPL’s huge scale [aijourn.com]. As streaming in India increasingly adopts hybrid models (subscription plus ads), such AI-powered ad engines are becoming essential for profitability.
On the analytics side, AI-driven predictive models help streaming platforms identify users at risk of churning (cancelling) so they can proactively offer discounts or relevant content to retain them. They also assist in dynamic pricing and package optimization – for instance, analyzing consumption patterns to tweak subscription plans or bundle popular content as add-ons. Although specifics are rarely disclosed publicly, ZEE5 hinted that it uses data analytics to refine its subscription pricing and content strategy by understanding user consumption trends in different markets [financialexpress.com].
In marketing campaigns, AI tools now sift through social media and viewership data to inform creative direction – e.g. identifying trending themes for a show’s X campaign, or automatically A/B testing different ad copy. All of this leads to more efficient marketing spends and higher conversion, which is crucial in India’s hyper-competitive streaming wars. The past year has seen a clear trend: streaming platforms that effectively harness AI for monetization (ads or subscriptions) have gained an edge in scaling their business sustainably.
If you missed the live stream of Netflix’s TUDUM, it is a masterclass in marketing and showcasing the stars, content IPs, upcoming shows and more at Netflix for the coming few months - what a way to build things up with the “sound” created at the beginning of the Netflix app launch as the name of the feature - masterclass in creating culturally relevant brands and businesses! Must watch - great line up.
Streaming in India is a weekly newsletter exploring the trends that matter to streaming professionals in India. If you are not already a subscriber, sign up and join several others who receive it directly in their inbox every Wednesday.
I am launching the region’s first fund called Pressplay Capital focused on the attention economy - LPs and Startups, please do get in touch here.
Please sign up for my other newsletter focused on “eyeball economy” focused startups (Media, Entertainment, Gaming, Ad Tech & Sports), the Indian / Middle East startup and venture capital ecosystem; in your inbox every Monday: Mehtta Ventures Dubai.
I represent the Adsolut Media business in the Middle East and am a “board observer” for their growth. We have amongst the largest supply of Connected Television premium inventory in the Middle East - Sub-continental corridor along with one of the largest mobile / web inventories as well. Please get in touch for your advertising requirements.