Content, Commerce & Community – The Future of Indian Media & Entertainment – Ms. Jyoti Deshpande Opening Speech

A very good morning, to the respected dignitaries here today, both physically and digitally…

Shri Piyush Goyal, Hon’ble Minister of Textile, Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Govt. of India

Shri Apurva Chandra, Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. of India

Mr Subhrakant Panda, President, FICCI and MD, Indian Metals & Ferro Alloys Ltd.

Mr Shailesh K Pathak, Secretary General, FICCI

And to our own Ayushmann Khurana

…and a very good morning to everyone here in the audience.

It is an honour and pleasure to be here today, looking into the future of a powerful and dynamic industry. These are exciting times for content, commerce, and community, which are the perennial pillars of the media and entertainment industry, growing exponentially fuelled by technological innovation. India is proudly leading the charge, taking our mantra of Make in India and show to the world.

The rich and diverse history of our stories has evolved over the last 90 years from Alam Ara – the first Indian talkie to now the Elephant Whisperers – a story from our nation’s heartlands making waves internationally. Quite literally the world dances to the tune of our Naatu Naatu as India’s voice rings proudly in the global entertainment landscape.

In 2015 Jio started a digital revolution to connect everyone and everything, everywhere. This dovetails with Digital India, the flagship programme of the Government of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.

With disruption such as Free digital IPL on Jio Cinema, and an imminent equally disruptive entertainment launch, a digital forward economy has already seen content and data consumption levels reach monumental proportions by global standards. Indians now consume nearly 20GB data per month on an average, No. 1 in the world already, and expected to reach 46 GB by 2027.

The proliferation of Smartphones, Connected TV, advent of 5G and affordable data rates all contribute to the fulfilment of the Digital India dream. Propelled by double digit growth, by 2025 we are set to become a INR2.83 trillion industry. I won’t reveal any more and steal the thunder of the Report launch.

We were told that the Indian content production industry was extremely fragmented, and we can never scale it. Just last month Jio Studios unveiled its powerful slate of 100 plus stories of movies and web series across languages, a case study in the Jiofication of the content industry.

It would be my dream to see us smash through these forecasts as we lead the digital forward way to the world – be it through democratisation of the creator economy or disruption in digital distribution. No one innovates like India. No one can implement to unimaginable scale like India.

With that, I would like to thank the entire M&E fraternity for coming together and working as one to realise this vision. I would also like to thank the I&B Ministry for their progressive approach towards policy and regulation. Lastly the entire FICCI team and our partners who have researched, written and put together this much awaited report.

Thank you all again for participating in this wonderful 3 days of ideas and knowledge exchange.

– Jyoti Deshpande, CEO – Viacom18