When Reliance threatened a Hyderabad techie with legal action over Jio domain

Ahead of the much-awaited merger of JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar, an opportunistic techie grabbed the JioHotstar domain and demanded Reliance fully fund his college education in return for letting them use the domain.
Now another techie has claimed that he was sent a legal notice by Reliance after he acquired the domains “reliancejio.com” and “riljio.com” in 2012, three years before Jio was officially announced.
“There’s a trending discussion about the JioHotstar domain purchase, so I thought I’d share my own story,” wrote Amit Bhawani in a series of posts on X.
He said that he had heard a rumour that “Jio” might be Reliance’s upcoming brand. “So I took a chance and registered those domains, thinking they might turn out to be valuable,” he said.
“Two years later, in 2014, I received a legal notice from Reliance’s team claiming that I was holding their trademarked property. Since they did officially own the trademark, and I was busy with other professional commitments, I decided not to go toe-to-toe with such a big company,” he said.
(Also read: Reliance threatening legal action, says techie who asked for ₹1 crore to give up JioHotstar domain)
Bhawani said that he tried his luck and asked for $25,000 ( ₹21 lakh approximately) for the domains, but Reliance responded with a firm notice. “They had the upper hand. Realising it wasn’t worth the fight, I handed over the domains without any fuss,” he said.
HT.com has reached out to Reliance for a statement and will update this copy if they respond.
The webpage now leading to JioHotstar currently opens to a message by a Delhi techie addressed to ‘dear executive of Reliance Industries.’
In the message, the Delhi techie said that when he heard about the news of Disney+Hotstar merger with Jio, he assumed that if Reliance acquires Hotstar, they might rename it to JioHotstar.com. “This reminded me of when Jio acquired the music streaming service Saavn, they rebranded it to JioSaavn, and changed the domain from Saavn.com to JioSaavn.com,” he wrote.
(Also read: Delhi techie snags ‘JioHotstar’ domain pre-merger, demands Cambridge education funding for sale to Reliance)
“I checked for the domain, and it was available. I was excited, as I felt that if this happened, I could fund my goal of studying at Cambridge,” he wrote.
The techie said that they were selected for the Cambridge University Accelerate program a few years ago but could no take up the offer due to financial constraints. “Cambridge also offers a full degree program in entrepreneurship, which I’ve always dreamed of pursuing but could never afford. My intention of buying this domain was simple: if this merger happens, I might be able to fulfill my dream of studying at Cambridge,” the message reads.