Creative economy is poised to double by 2025

2020 presented us with monumental challenges – as individuals, as businesses, as society. However, there were some silver linings as well. Several digital trends accelerated their trajectory, fed by growth in broadband, personal devices and smart televisions, and the time and inclination to try online services.

Consequently, the Media & Entertainment (M&E) businesses had to accelerate some of the changes that they had started and to relook at their customer engagement models as new demand-side patterns emerged. This new reality also placed increased importance on understanding consumer behavior to better engage with them.

India’s diversity and scale will continue to fuel the growth of traditional media, but equally exciting is the fact that there are a number of new and big opportunities for M&E businesses. And we’re already seeing the Industry embrace these changes and chart a new growth path.

Today content creation and storytelling are much more diverse and come from all parts of the country. New distribution models and monetization strategies are evolving across both large and small screens. Learning content and gaming have emerged as very large new opportunities. These changes are driving a shift in monetization of content investments and this opportunity is global.

2020 has super-charged these changes and promises to propel the Indian creative economy to double in size by 2025 and drive a much larger contribution to India’s GDP goals. This is the time for the sector to forego holding on to old ways of thinking and working, and its sense of complacency about what’s possible in the future. The opportunity is discontinuous. The answer to what we can do is nonlinear – we need to disrupt our old business models, our approach, our solutions, our marketing, and our distribution and collaborate more closely with the government to harness the true potential of M&E and arrive at the necessary impetus and support.

The author is Chairman, FICCI Media and Entertainment Board and Country Head & Vice President, Google India