Indian Media and Entertainment Industry: Seizing Opportunities and Overcoming Challenges

Introduction
The Media & Entertainment industry has immense power to influence, shape, and transform society. The industry is witnessing a massive transformation in the current scenario. It was a rollercoaster ride in the past few years for the whole industry when it came up with a few struggles, difficulties in producing content, the closure of cinema halls and a cut back in spending on advertisements during the pandemic. However, this situation was followed by a cycle of a strong revival. The agility and inclination to face and overcome challenges are being proved by this industry through the ways it has revived its charm and performed better than pre-pandemic. The core of this industry is to keep pace with the changing environment to produce quality and relatable content. The disruptive innovations which are at their peak are changing consumer behaviour, and technology leading to a risk for the irrelevancy of the media and entertainment industry. The popularity of YouTube videos, podcasts, Over-the-Top (OTT) media services, and digital broadcasting has given rise to a variety of occupations in the sector, including journalism, advertising, digital marketing, and public relations.

Some facts about the Media and Entertainment industry—

• By 2024, it is expected that India’s media & entertainment industry will reach US$ 30.9 billion.
• By 2025, there will likely be more than 40 million smart connected TVs, up from 10 million in 2021.
• The digital media segment grew 29% to reach US$ 5.2 billion in 2021.
• The online gaming segment grew 28% in 2021 to reach US$ 1.2 billion and is expected to reach US$ 1.9 billion by 2024.
• In 2021, there was a 28% growth in the filmed entertainment segment. Around 757 films were released, with over 100 films released directly on video streaming platforms.
• In 2021, the animation and VFX segment grew 103% to reach US$ 1 billion and is expected to reach US$ 2.2 billion by 2024.

Industry Overview and Opportunities
India is the second-largest online news-consuming nation, the world’s second-largest market in terms of app downloads and the world’s largest fantasy sports market with a user base of 130 million. India also secures fourth rank in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services export. The growth in television households will continue to grow at over 5% till 2025, which is driven by connected TVs. It is estimated to cross 40 million by 2025 and DD-free dishes could cross 50 million in the same year.

The subscriber base of the Indian telecommunications market is 1.18 billion which results in India being the world’s second largest in the segment. The mobile economy is booming at a good pace and constitutes around 98% of all telephone subscriptions.

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) aims to have a tectonic shift in digital strategy to harness the opportunity to create an economic value addition of US$ 800 billion by the year 2024 and US$ 1 trillion by the year 2025 through the right digital interventions.

• With the rise in demand for regional content consumption, the share of regional content in TV and OTT consumption is expected to reach 60% and 50% respectively by 2025.
• The number of video viewers has increased to 497 million.
• Indians spent the maximum time (1.5 billion hours) on online sports worldwide, around a third of the global time spent on sports apps.
• It is estimated that digital ad spending in India will reach US$ 21 billion by 2028.

The industry growth is being supported by various government initiatives such as digitizing the cable distribution sector to attract greater institutional funding, increasing the FDI limit from 74% to 100% in cable and direct-to-home (DTH) satellite platforms, and granting industry status to the film industry for easy access to institutional finance. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting set up Film Facilitation Office (FFO) which acts as a single window clearance and facilitation point for producers and production companies with a view to assist them in getting requisite filming permissions. In 2020, the government of India also announced the plan to support and develop a centre specifically for Animation, Visual-effects, Gaming, and Comic (AVGC).

Opportunities
India is the world’s second-largest telecommunications market with a subscriber base of 1.17 billion as of August 2022. In a country with 300 million households, there are around one-third of households who are still without television set and this data depicts that there’s an opportunity for growth and development in the sector. The broadcasting industry can work as a powerful source which can educate, inspire, and empower viewers with strong opinions and views. Therefore, it is important that the government and industry work together to give every Indian home access to television.

Globally, the Animation, Visual-effects, Gaming and Comics (AVGC) sector is an industry of US$ 800 billion. However, India has a huge talent force supporting this industry while it accounts for less than one percent share in the industry. The AVGC sector has the potential to boom and become the next IT sector of India and the target could be around 5% in a year, which will be close to a US$ 40 billion opportunity. The same growth has the potential to create around 1,60,000 jobs across the nation. The gaming industry is booming as a high-growth segment along with the contribution of skill-based gaming. Under this segment, India has least percentage share if compared globally, however, India has a substantial growth opportunity with the availability of skills and policies supporting it.

Film making industry in India is being supported by nature itself, the opportunity expands with the beautiful and diverse locations and landscapes, good infrastructure, and high-quality manpower; India has all the ingredients required to unlock and expand this opportunity and become a preferred destination for international film shoots.

The opportunities are not only in India, but there is also an option to take Indian content to global audiences. South India has set a great example of the same across the globe as it has demonstrated that good content travels beyond boundaries and language barriers. India has a strong set of ecosystems of talent, production efficiencies and creative capabilities, and it generates huge opportunities to mark our strength and culture on the global stage. The industry can come together, explore, and create content that can break all global boundaries and become a storyteller to the world. The growth and stories of regional movies are better than other cumulative work. However, the industry has an opportunity to create masterpieces that can cross geographical boundaries and establish relatability around the globe. Moving towards print media, music, and radio, these subsectors continue to be important contributors to the industry. There are various changes in this industry with ongoing development and improvements.

The Way Forward
The media and entertainment industry has seen robust growth with continuous improvement and various approaches as well. For the past two years, the industry has shown immense resilience and there has been a bounce back to the pre-covid scenarios. The pandemic undoubtedly created a disruption in the consumption habits of consumers. However, with the advent of ongoing digitalization and new technologies, the media and film industry is expected to show significant growth over the next few years. The strong growth in OTT, gaming, animation and VFX is cumulatively estimated to contribute to around US$ 55-70 billion by 2030. The industry continuously showcases multimodal growth with digital video leading to a consumption boom, however the potential growth depends on the realization of supply and demand side factors. The integration of content and advertisement is growing more prevalent as digital advertising moves toward more "interactive" commercials. Platforms for short-form video are expanding and offer advertisers a special value proposition. With a more than ten-fold increase in gaming companies over the past ten years, India is also growing as a talent hotspot. Over the past few years, this has caused a boom in VC funding for the industry. After a challenging 2020, the film industry has demonstrated optimistic indications of resurgence. Future growth prospects include the expansion of content films, direct-to-digital releases, and regional box office growth. The development of the industry's infrastructure, intellectual capital, and financial incentives depends on the post-production, VFX, and animation sectors in India.