What do Mohanlal-starrer ‘Thudarum’, Disney’s ‘Mufasa’, and Akshay Kumar-helmed ‘Kesari Chapter 2’ have in common? Reliance Industries earnings

In what could be called a pan-Indian global moment, the investors of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) were greeted with a particular slide during the conglomerate’s financial results presentation on Friday night. The slide featured what were the last quarter’s major milestones for JioHotstar, apart from the IPL season—Hindi film Kesari Chapter 2, Hollywood movie Mufasa, and Malayalam blockbuster Thudarum, found their place in Mukesh Ambani’s slideshow.

While Akshay Kumar and Madhavan-helmed Kesari Chapter 2 was “2025’s biggest movie across all languages on JioHotstar”, Disney’s live-action Lion King sidebar Mufasa became the “most watched international film ever on the platform”, and Malayalam superstar Mohanlal’s biggest 2025 hit Thudarum recorded the “highest watch-time for a Malayalam movie on JioHotstar”.

When the largest listed company in the country by market cap specifically dedicates a slide for these milestones, it becomes clear that entertainment for JioStar—the group’s arm that owns JioHotstar—is serious business.

For the first quarter of fiscal 2026 that ended in June, JioStar posted an ops revenue of ₹9,601 crore, generating EBITDA of ₹1,017 crore. In contrast, the entertainment arm of RIL recorded ₹9,497 crore in revenue from operations from November 14 2024, to March 31 2025, following the Reliance-Disney deal for Hotstar.

This points to a steady growth in its entertainment arm, especially with the IPL broadcasting rights. “[The first quarter] was driven by a successful IPL season with strong growth across both TV and digital platforms,” said RIL in a regulatory release, “the quarter saw remarkable growth, achieving a subscriber base of 287 million during IPL on JioHotstar and reaching over 800 million people on TV during the quarter.”

In the last month of the first quarter, i.e., June 2025, JioHotstar recorded its highest-ever monthly entertainment watch-time.

The three-month period saw JioStar incurring a finance cost of ₹118 crore, finally earning a profit after tax of ₹581 crore—more than double since the Nov-Mar period.

This all added up to the overall results of RIL, with the conglomerate seeing a 78.3 per cent jump year-on-year in first-quarter consolidated net profit to ₹26,994 crore. For the three-month period, the group’s consolidated ops revenue soared by 5.26 per cent to a whopping ₹2.49 lakh crore. Yes, JioStar contributed only a minute fraction of it—just above 3.5 per cent, but Mohanlal, Madhavan, Akshay Kumar, and our IPL stars played a part in it.

Business