Indian media and entertainment sector to reach $25.2bn in 2022

Key findings

• The Indian M&E sector is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13% and the key contributors to this growth will be digital, films and television (together adding 65% of the growth), followed by animation and VFX (14% each) and online gaming (7%).

• Even as the share of traditional media stood at 68% of sector revenues, the digital media, expectedly, grew sizably to establish itself as the second-largest segment.

• The growth in the digital infrastructure is also growing by leaps and bounds. As per the findings, India has 795m broadband connections, over 500m smartphones and 10m connected TVs, apart from170m active TV connections. 390 million Indians played online games, 150bn streams of online music were consumed, 40m Indian households paid for 80 million online video subscriptions and 400 million subscribers consumed bundled content in 2021. The number of screens is expected to reach 1bn by 2024/25.

• India is among the largest content producers in the world and is fast becoming the content back office of the world.

• It produced 150,000 hours of TV content, 2,500 hours of premium OTT content and 2,000 hours of filmed content in 2021, backed by over 950 animation and VFX studios, 185,000 electronic artists and 139 universities.

According to Ashish Pherwani, EY India media & entertainment leader: “India has always been a different kind of media and entertainment market, up top with the rest on technology and ahead of the pack when it comes to digital adoption.”

He added: “Technology has led to the democratization of M&E in India and the flow of consumer data provides rich and real-time insights on what the consumer likes and dislikes, when where and how it is being consumed.”

Sanjay Gupta, chairman, FICCI media and entertainment committee said: “The massive disruption of Covid-19 in 2020 was a seminal event for all industries and more so for M&E as more people relied on it to educate, inform, and comfort them during these challenging and complex times. In 2021, the industry and consumers have embraced the choices that have emerged wholeheartedly, and recovery is well underway with digital serving a pivotal role in it.”