MaxView: The 6-Week JioHotstar Bet That Changed How India Watches Cricket | Ep 2 Highlights

Saurabh Agarwal is the VP of Product Management at JioHotstar, overseeing products used by 500+ million users across India. When the team observed users struggling with horizontal cricket viewing while commuting, Saurabh made a bold bet: launch MaxView, a vertical cricket viewing experience, with zero supporting data. The result? Multiple times improvement in user engagement and a complete transformation of how people watch sports.

What you'll learn:
How to make product decisions with zero data (and why "pure hunch calls" sometimes work better than research)
The user observation technique that led to MaxView: watching commuters and multitaskers in their natural environment
Why 90% of users still don't know about MaxView (and how Hotstar is solving the discovery problem)
The split-screen innovation that brought TV-style viewing to vertical format
How MaxView unlocked new behaviors: swipe-up for key moments, swipe-right for camera angles
The psychology of "shaping behavior vs following behavior" in product development
How to turn user habits from other platforms (like Yt shorts, Instagram) into competitive advantages
Why building on existing user behaviors can "multiple times" feature adoption

Brought to you by: Enzo Lab

Where to find Saurabh Agarwal:
LinkedIn:   / srbhgrwl  

Where to find Enzo lab:
Website: https://enzolab.in
LinkedIn:   / enzolabdesign  

In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Saurabh Agarwal and MaxView
(00:56) The core hypothesis: vertical viewing evolution
(01:52) MaxView features: swipe-up for key moments, swipe-right for camera angles
(02:04) Multiple times improvement in key moments and multicam adoption
(03:04) The discovery problem: why users don't know about MaxView
(03:19) Split-screen innovation and contextual viewing
(04:26) Learning from TV: replay viewing and split-screen evolution
(05:25) Building on user behavior: from short-form to sports viewing
(06:03) Shape behavior vs follow behavior philosophy

Products & Companies:
JioHotstar: https://www.hotstar.com/in/shows
MaxView feature: https://blog.hotstar.com/maxview-game...