“We now think it might be best for Team Reliance to have this domain.”
The saga of owning JioHotstar has just taken yet another unexpected twist.
The Dubai-based NRI siblings, Jainam & Jivika Jain, who purchased the domain “JioHotstar.com” from an unnamed Delhi-based developer, and now ready to hand over the domain name to Reliance for free.
Sharing a new update on the domain, the young siblings wrote: “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.”
They added that they had been subject to a great deal of talk about why they owned the domain, and if it connects to a business deal between Jio and Hotstar, and sought to clarify their stance.
“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,” they wrote.
The siblings made a surprising “offer” to Reliance Industries, highlighting that they believed it would be best for “Team Reliance” to have the domain, if they wanted it.
“We are happy to give jiohotstar.com to them for free, with all the proper paperwork,” they wrote. “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.”
To facilitate the process, the siblings stated that if Reliance was interested, it could contact them at jainam@1xl.com or jivika@1xl.com.
However, if the giant were not interested, the siblings would continue to share updates about their journey and their work.
Shifting the focus of the discussion to their ongoing philanthropic platform, SevakArmy.com, the siblings then urged the media and influencers to spread the word about their important initiative.
“Our goal is simple but powerful: we want 100,000 people to volunteer just 20 hours a year,” they wrote. “This would add up to 2 million hours of service in the first year—like having 1,000 people working full-time for a year to help NGOs.”
As of yet, Reliance’s response is unknown.
