The JioHotstar saga, after a few days of haitus, has now added a new chapter to it. The Dubai-based NRI siblings, Jainam Jain & Jivika Jain, who reportedly purchased the domain name JioHotstar.com from an unnamed, unknown Delhi-based developer, are now ready to return the said domain name to the Reliance corporation.
Siblings To Give Away The Domain
In a new post on the website, the 'philanthropist' siblings said, "Recently, we received many emails from people wanting to buy the domain. To check if these offers were real, we reached out to some of them.
We found that while some offers were fake, a few were serious and offered a lot of money. But even with these genuine offers, we never wanted to sell the domain. We made this clear by replying to everyone that the domain was not for sale."
'Never Meant To Cause Any Confusion'
Furthermore, they added, "Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk and even some videos about why we own the domain and if it connects to a possible business deal between Jio and Hotstar. We want to clear up any confusion: we never expected this attention and never meant to cause any controversy. Our only goal was to support the developer and share our seva (service) journey."
Offer To Reliance
In the post, making an "offer" to Reliance Industries, the siblings said, "With all the discussions happening, we now think it might be best for Team Reliance to have this domain, if they want it. We are happy to give jiohotstar.com to them for free, with all the proper paperwork. To be clear, this is entirely our choice. No one from Reliance or any legal group has contacted us or pressured us in any way. We made this decision on our own, without any pressure from friends, family, or anyone else."
How Did It All Start?
The saga, which has reached this point, started when a Delhi-based techie bought the now controversial domain name, anticipating a merger of Reliance and Disney's websites Jiocinema and Disney Hotstar, respectively.
The techie asked RIL to fund his academic dream of studying at the UK's coveted Cambridge University.
Things took a sour turn as the techie claimed he was threatened with legal proceedings. As a result of the chaotic developments, the techie soon abandoned the plan of procuring resources from Reliance and posted the domain name for a sale, with a price tag of around Rs 21 lakh.
Later, the website was picked up by the aforementioned siblings, who ran it to exhibit their charity work on the website. Reliance or related authorities are yet to comment on the matter.
