By Aditya Kalra and Kanjyik Ghosh

April 25 (Reuters) - JioCinema, the streaming platform

run by India's Reliance Industries, on Thursday cut

prices of its premium offering to as low as 29 rupees ($0.3480)

a month, heating up competition for Netflix ( NFLX ) and Amazon

Prime.

Reliance runs multiple TV channels and JioCinema streaming

app through its media unit Viacom18 and has a sizeable hold over

India's $28-billion media and entertainment market.

An advertisement-free version would start at an introductory

price of 29 rupees per month for streaming on a single device

and go up to 89 rupees for a "Family" plan to stream on four

simultaneous devices, JioCinema said in a statement.

The platform previously priced its premium offering at 99

rupees ($1.19) a month, or 999 rupees a year, for streaming on

up to four devices simultaneously. The plan was not ad-free.

Existing JioCinema premium members will get all the

additional benefits of the "Family" plan at no extra cost, it

said.

JioCinema has become popular for showing the IPL cricket

tournament for free. The new pricing, it said, is only for

premium content, while the matches and many other shows would

continue to stream for free.

Mukesh Ambani, who runs India's top conglomerate Reliance

Industries, has a reputation of disrupting rivals in the

price-sensitive Indian market with cheap offers.

Lower prices would place JioCinema in a stronger footing to

compete with Netflix ( NFLX ) and Amazon ( AMZN ) after an agreement with Disney

to merge India TV and streaming assets, and content deals with

the likes of Warner Bros Discovery ( WBD ) and NBCUniversal.

JioCinema hosts popular titles such as "Succession" and

shows featuring the character Harry Potter, alongside a variety

of offerings targeting kids including popular Japanese anime

series, Pokemon.

($1 = 83.3367 Indian rupees)