JioHotstar has announced a new feature called Shop the Look. The feature is available only on mobile and lets users explore and buy products seen on screen without pausing the show or leaving the app. This is an interesting move in the Indian OTT space and shows how streaming platforms are trying to turn passive viewing into interactive experiences.
Shop the Look has been built directly into the JioHotstar app as a native feature. It has gone live with fashion brand NEWME as its first partner. The feature made its debut with the latest season of MTV Splitsvilla, which premiered on January 9. While watching an episode, viewers see outfits worn on screen appear in a separate shopping layer. They can browse similar styles and complete the entire purchase within the app, including payment and address confirmation.
JioHotstar says the focus was to keep the viewing experience intact. Shopping is optional and only appears when users choose to engage with it. Playback continues without interruption, which helps avoid the forced or intrusive feel that content ads often create. At launch, the feature is limited to fashion, but the company has confirmed that the system is designed to scale to other categories like beauty, accessories, and even food and grocery in the future.
I also checked how this feature works. Right now, it doesn’t seem interesting because the outfits listed there were not similar to what was worn on screen. I am not talking about the same styling, but the similarity was also missing. It was like watching a fashion brand’s ad in a separate tab.
From a broader perspective, Shop the Look makes sense in a market like India, where mobile viewing dominates, and impulse-driven shopping is already common. If done carefully, this feature could offer value to viewers instead of feeling like an ad layer. The real challenge will be scale and relevance. The feature will only work if the products shown truly match the viewer’s interest and pricing expectations.
In India, Amazon has already been experimenting with live commerce through creator-led streams on Amazon Live. Influencers and content creators showcase products in real time, answer questions, and drive purchases during live sessions. This model has helped Amazon improve engagement and product discovery, especially in categories like fashion, beauty, and electronics. However, JioHotstar’s move operates at a much larger scale. Instead of relying mainly on creators, it brings commerce directly into celebrity-driven and premium entertainment content that already attracts millions of viewers. By integrating shopping into popular shows and mainstream content, JioHotstar is taking the concept beyond creator commerce and into mass audience viewing.
Globally, similar in-stream shopping and live commerce features have already shown strong results in many countries. In China, the live commerce market reached around $370 billion in revenue in 2024, with platforms like Douyin and Taobao Live driving a huge share of online sales and attracting hundreds of millions of regular users. This market is expected to continue growing fast in the next few years, as live commerce helps brands connect directly with viewers and turn engagement into purchases.
It is good to see how Indian companies are also trying to use technology to explore new segments. If this is done right, it can show the world how commerce and storytelling can work together without breaking the viewing experience. Whether users adopt it widely will depend on how subtle and useful the feature feels in daily use.
