The Hotstar team used Firebase A/B Testing to test different onboarding UIs. The results revealed that watch time increased when users were asked to select a language vs. a country during onboarding.

Hotstar also used Firebase Remote Config, Google Analytics for Firebase, and Firebase Crashlytics to add gamification and a new emoji feature to its watch screen, without sacrificing stability. First, the team rolled out these changes to a subset of users through Remote Config. Then, they tracked issues in Crashlytics, which showed a high number of crashes on low-end devices. The team sprung into action. They created a Firebase 'audience' of users on low-end devices and turned off the new feature for this group using conditional targeting in Remote Config. Impressively, Hotstar was able to do all of this without releasing a new build.

With experiments and controlled feature rollouts, Hotstar was able to update its watch screen, shield users from a buggy experience, and also reduce the burden on their APIs. According to their data, these changes increased daily watch time by 38% and greatly improved app startup time from 8s to 3s.