Scaling Digital Heights

The media and entertainment industry grew by almost 13% in 2017 to reach INR 1.5 trillion, according to the FICCI - EY report 2018

- Vinita Bhatia

The Indian media and entertainment (M&E) sector reached almost INR1.5 trillion ($22.7 billion) in 2017, a growth of around 13% over 2016. With its current trajectory, it is expect to cross INR 2 trillion ($31 billion) by 2020, at a CAGR of 11.6%.

The digital segment led growth, demonstrating that advertising budgets are in line with the changing content consumption patterns. The FICCI-EY report, ‘Re-imagining India’s M&E sector,’ launched at FICCI Frames 2018 in Mumbai, captured some key insights from this exciting and fast growing Indian M&E sector.

One of this was that the M&E sector continues to grow at a rate faster than the GDP growth rate, reflecting the growing disposable income led by stable economic growth and changing demographics. Subscription growth outpaced advertising growth in 2017 but advertising will continue to grow till 2020 led by digital advertising.

At FICCI Frames 2018, Sanjay Gupta, MD, Star India, challenged the present attendees to lift their standards of quality, change the way they use technology and increase its investments to bring India’s stories to more consumers around the world to help the INR 1,47,000 crore M&E industry prosper.

“Digital is unleashing the power of new screens. Ours is a country that has always been constrained by screens. There are only 9,000 theatres in the country. Then came TV, which grew phenomenally over three decades and today, there are 16 crore TV screens and we add more than one crore new screens every year. But, with the power of connectivity and low cost of data, in almost a click, over 35 crore more screens across the country have been lit up. And this journey has just begun,” he said.