Amidst the streaming wars, Disney+ has finally arrived with a boatload of nostalgia and you won’t be able to find a reason not to subscribe to the service. It has currently been made available in just three countries, but we have found a nifty hack to make Disney+ work in India as well.
We too were shocked when we first saw that Disney+ is showing subscription prices in Indian rupees. The screenshot below shows the “Start Free Trial” button, with the first appearance of the Indian subscription. We were flabbergasted on seeing the price and thought it must be an error or server-side mistake. But, we were wrong.
A Standalone Attempt or Hotstar Partnership?
The aforementioned chatter is in stark contrast to the fact that Hostar will be hosting all the Disney+ content in India. Owned by Star India, Hotstar is essentially a part of Walt Disney Group and it is said to be localizing Disney+ content by dubbing movies and TV shows or adding subtitles in regional languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Tamil or Telegu.
Hi! We are working on bringing Disney+ to India. The launch date is yet to be announced; stay tuned. Thank you!
Though Hotstar mentions that it will bring Disney+ content to its platform soon, we are guessing that Disney is going to debut its streaming service as a standalone platform in India. It would offer originals through its own streaming service but provide other content to a wider audience via Hotstar.
We haven’t gone in-depth to talk about each of the subscription plans, but anyone could easily see that Disney+ is not the cheapest bet here. You are spending almost the same amount as you will on Netflix’s base plan but Disney+ offers access to better quality (4K) content. And not just that, Disney+ has the motherload of content – Marvel movies, Star Wars movies and TV series, Pixar movies, and a myriad of cartoon shows. Ah, so much nostalgia.
