Despite Covid challenges, India’s media and entertainment industry has revived to pre-Covid levels and is expected to grow to $55-70 billion by 2030 at 10-12 per cent CAGR, according to a report released by BCG-CII. The growth will be driven mainly by the OTT, gaming, animation and VFX segments.

The report noted that the industry continues to showcase multimodal growth with digital video leading the consumption boom, but added that the growth realisation of this potential will depend on “several supply-side and demand-side factors.”

The Indian OTT sector is currently in the “scaling stage” with strong subscription growth and high investment in premium and original content, with over 40 players.

“Cord cutting” (cancelling TV subscription and moving to OTT) is in the nascent stages and is expected to be limited in the medium term. The share of traditional media is slowly declining, with increased digital adoption, but there is still high headroom for penetration, with only 54 per cent of Indian households having a pay TV connection compared to more than 70 per cent in China. For many households, TV continues to be the centre of the home and a significant part of family time,” said Mandeep Kohli, Managing Director and Partner, Boston Consulting Group India.

The past year has been a challenging one for the media and entertainment industry, however the industry has shown strong recovery with TV ad volumes bouncing back to pre-Covid levels and expected to continue growing in the future, driven by increased advertising on regional channels and entry of new advertisers.

Gaming in India is currently under-penetrated but is expected to witness strong growth due to the “mobile first” phenomenon. India is also emerging as a talent hub, with more than 10x increase in the number of gaming companies over the last decade. This has led to a boom in VC funding for the sector over the last few years. “India has less than 10 per cent of the global market share in the VFX and animation segment, and has the potential to scale this up to 20-25 per cent through structural interventions,” the report added.

K Madhavan, Chairman, CII National Committee on Media & Entertainment and President, The Walt Disney Company India and Star India says, “Our industry has always been at the forefront of disruption and we will continue to innovate over the next decade. We will now need new answers and will need them fast, even on the most fundamental things like talent pool, to run our companies and methodology for measuring the impact we are delivering to advertisers on our platforms. We will need to continue to embrace change going forward, to create the most value for consumers as well as our partners.”

Added Siddharth Roy Kapur, Co-Chairman, CII National Committee on Media & Entertainment and, “Film production and film exhibition were amongst the worst affected sectors in the M&E business due to the pandemic. After a long period of shutdown, cinema halls are now back in business with a bang. A record number of big-ticket movies are lined up for release well into 2022. That augurs well for the sector, but caps on occupancies, closures of cinemas and modified audience behaviour might impact the speed of recovery. On the other hand, streaming has provided new avenues for screening and broad-based the options available for producers, artistes and technicians.”

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