Despite being a late entrant in the world of audio-visual entertainment, India has become one of the most exciting media markets globally, said Uday Shankar, vice chairman at JioStar in his keynote address at the India AI Impact Summit.
“Within the span of a quarter century, we have gone from an industry valued at a few billion dollars to the fifth-largest media and entertainment market in the world, with an economic contribution of more than $30 billion. We have transitioned from one state broadcaster to more than 900 channels across dozens of languages. Our reach has expanded from about 70 million households to more than 210 million television households and over 800 million video consumers. And the content itself has evolved beyond recognition — from a few tentative experiments in family drama to a vast, diverse, multilingual ecosystem serving the most heterogeneous audience on earth,” he said.
JioStar alone has invested $10 billion in content over the past three years, he said. “Every major global media enterprise is competing fiercely for the Indian viewer. Those who are not here are absent because they could not crack this complex market,” Shankar said in his speech.
But he also pointed out that despite the country’s remarkable progress, India has not yet broken through as a global content powerhouse. “In my view, our ability to translate our abundant ambition into reality has been constrained by a few structural factors — chief among them a lack of capital, an inability to attract global talent, and a target audience largely confined to the domestic market,” he added.
Capital and talent are constrained and the horizon of content narrows, he explained.
“Our films, our television, our music have been made primarily for consumers within the country, or at best, for our diaspora abroad. There have been spectacular exceptions — RRR at the Oscars, Dangal’s global box-office success. But that is exactly what they are: exceptions, not a pattern,” Shankar said.
“AI provides India a once-in-a-generation opportunity to become the creative capital of the world. Not the back office for the world’s content. The leader. The standard-setter,” he said.
The media market globally is nearly $3 trillion and is heading to $3.5 trillion by 2029. India’s share is currently less than two per cent and AI has the potential to explode India’s share of this pie, according to Shankar.
“Even a modest shift in our share of global revenue — from two per cent to five — would represent tens of billions of dollars in new value creation,” he said.
The scale of India’s market and the power of technology have finally aligned, according to him. “This technology is the ultimate leveller. Let us not just participate in this new era. Let us lead it.”
 "India has become one of the most exciting media markets: Uday Shankar")
