Shah Rukh Khan in any room, anywhere in the world, gets attention. When you have Khan welcoming the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi with the biggest names in show business watching, the world sits up and takes notice. If the idea behind World Audio-Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) 2025 was to draw the world’s attention to India’s creative industries, it did. 

The might of its US$29 billion media and entertainment (M&E) business was on full display on the first four days of May at the Jio World Centre in Mumbai.

On the talent side speakers ranged from film stars like Khan, actor and Louis Vuitton’s brand ambassador Deepika Padukone to musicians such as Oscar winner A.R. Rahman and filmmaker S.S Rajamouli (of RRR fame) among many others.

On the business side there was Ted Sarandos (co-CEO, Netflix), Neal Mohan (CEO, YouTube), Mukesh Ambani (chairman and MD, Reliance Industries) and Uday Shankar (vice chairman, JioStar).... 

A pavilion where over 100 firms across content, broadcasting and media-tech displayed their offerings, a Start-up segment, a film bazaar, gaming, animation, shorts competitions, talks, panel discussions, entertainment evenings and lots of networking were among the attractions. This was a spectacle through and through.

But you need to go past the glamour.

India is the world’s largest producer of films, the second largest television market and one of the largest consumers of video. It has about 900 million TV viewers (across pay and free TV) and 650 million smartphone users. Notice that these are volume-centric metrics. 

On value, the entire Indian M&E sector is a third of Walt Disney Company’s revenues. But unlike many other markets it has been growing, albeit patchily. From 8.3% in 2023, revenue growth slowed to 3.3% in 2024, thanks to a fall in pay revenues in TV and falling revenues from animation and visual effects. 

The M&E sector is expected to grow at over 7% annually until 2027, reaching US$36.1 billion says EY’s latest FICCI-Frames report.

Two things are needed to unlock value for Indian entertainment in the domestic and global markets – more screens and more capital. 

Many of the discussions at WAVES touched upon the screen part. “The biggest hits have a footfall of about 35 million people; that is just 2% of our population. Where is the remaining 98% watching our films? For a vast number of Indians there is no local cinema to go to,” said actor/producer Aamir Khan. 

At about 8,700 screens, India has just six screens for every million of its people compared to say 125 in the U.S. or 30 in China.

Take smartphones, the other screen where revenues are growing in double digits. The number of smartphone users has been stuck for almost three years because of high prices. For millions of Indians, a smartphone is the first port of entry into the internet. As sales stagnate, the reach of digital media has been stagnating, though revenue continues to rise on the back of rising hours of usage by existing audiences.

The capital bit was not really in focus at WAVES. But if India wants to be the studio of the world, as the EY report released around the event suggests, it needs a lot more capital.

Development centres set up by Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others leveraging India’s mobile user base to design apps and features that integrate payments, utilities and emerging tech are huge job generators. Ditto for the Indian Institute of Creative Technology, announced by India’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at the event. Both of these leverage India’s tech and content chops.

But India’s strength is also in telling stories. It is the only country along with Korea where local entertainment rules on the small and big screen without any protection or import quotas on foreign programming. 

However, except for the Rs1,000 crore from Adar Poonawalla into Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions, there has been no action in the content space.

Streaming firms, which brought in money from 2018-2021 or so, have now stabilised content spends. The announcement that JioStar will be spending US$3.6 billion on programming this year then is good news.

WAVES has done a great job of spotlighting India’s M&E business. The job of building the blocks that help unlock its true potential remains.

▶ Published in ContentAsia's 5 May 2025 eNewsletter