Hotstar has been the older brand in India. Have you been able to establish the Disney identity here?
The Indian market and the Star brand are very important to Walt Disney Co. from a linear as well as digital perspective. With the acquisition of Fox, we gained a lot of wonderful assets, from Star and Hotstar to Star Studios. It’s a market that’s growing, and as a business, we’re very bullish on our opportunities in India.
Disney Star lost Indian Premier League’s digital rights, but it retained the TV rights. Will that mean a greater focus on general entertainment?
When I look at our portfolio, the first part is our linear television channels and how strong they still are. India is one of the few regions in the world where linear TV is growing, and people spend almost four hours per day watching television.
We have a portfolio of over 70 Star channels, which is an important asset for the company in India. We also are the number one D2C service partly because of that brand, besides all the local and Disney content. Our Marvel content really resonates with consumers in the region.
The great thing for us as the Walt Disney Co. is that all of that content sits side by side on that app. So there are sports for sports fans, there are movies and local and global content series. When I look at the India portfolio, the sum is so much better than its parts.
Why have you continued to invest in cricket (IPL, ICC) even though sports rights may not bring immediate returns?
I’m not going to comment on the profitability or non-profitability, but I can say that we’re a public company, and we have a responsibility to our shareholders. Around the world, our strategy is to look at every sports right that’s coming up. We decide how much we’re willing to pay for them, and we’re disciplined about that in our approach. It’s public that we decided to look for linear and digital IPL rights, and we received the linear rights.
Then we got Cricket Australia rights, and a couple of weeks ago, we had ICC in Dubai, where we ended up getting both and had a partnership with Zee, where they take the linear rights, and we have digital. So when I look back over the summer, we have a great portfolio.
You were very personally invested in bidding for the IPL and travelled to India. How much freedom does the local management team in India have?
We have a fantastic local management team in India. KM (K. Madhavan) is a great leader and businessman. When I look at my role, I add support. I had not been to India because of the pandemic, and this was the first time that I was able to go there and meet with the leadership teams.
But we have a leadership team there because they live there. They’re part of the community there. We’re not running India out of Burbank but out of our headquarters in Mumbai and all of our offices there. At Walt Disney, we have four regions and a corporate headquarters working in tandem with each other. We set a global strategy from the company level, and then locally or regionally, we trust our leadership to execute that strategy.
Will film production still remain a focus in India for you?
It is a focus. The release of Brahmastra allows our local India studio team to work with our global distribution team on movies to come. Star Studios is doing two strategic things for us. One is (working on) the big theatrical experience, we have Brahmastra, and other films will follow. The second thing that they are doing is creating unique films for Disney+ Hotstar. We have Babli Bouncer, directed by Madhur Bhandarkar, coming later this month. We have Gulmohar which stars Manoj Bajpayee and Sharmila Tagore.
We have something that Nitesh Tiwari is creatively producing with us. We’ve got a really exciting slate with at least five films in various stages of production. A massive revival has happened in the last 12-18 months, and it’s a balance between theatrical and direct-to-digital where we will have the big tentpole movies that will have all screens and then there are some good dramas that we feel would do well just directly on our service.
Jha was at Disney’s D23 Expo in Anaheim at the invitation of the company.
