Google, Meta, and JioStar are the three largest media and entertainment companies in India, by far. Bennett, Coleman and Company, publishers of The Times of India, is a distant fourth. JioStar, which houses Viacom18 and Disney-Star India, became one firm in 2024.
That is the only reason there is a mainstream media firm in the top three. If Sony and Zee had gone ahead with their merger, they would have been ahead of Bennett at over Rs 15,000 crore in top line. The consolidation that has been sweeping the business is now evident in the concentration of audience and revenue share in India’s Rs 2.3 trillion media and entertainment business.
That is the first thing that stands out in the list of top 12 media firms in India that Business Standard has put together from annual reports and figures from the Registrar of Companies for FY24. These firms account for over half the entire media business.
Second is the changing nature of the media ecosystem. The top two firms, which reach almost all the 523 million Indians online (Comscore), rule the whole ad dependent and user-generated content space. This is where social media, shorts, search and influencers sit. Mainstream firms, which generate series, films, music or news, come lower down. A large chunk of the music and videos they create power the user-generated space, too. However for now, it is Google and Meta that rule it.
This brings it to the third fact. Google and Meta accounted for over 95 per cent of the Rs 64,500 crore spent on digital media in 2023. They are over one-fourth of the total Indian media and entertainment business.