Artificial intelligence could become the inflection point that finally propels India from a large domestic media market to a global content powerhouse, said Uday Shankar, Vice Chairman of JioStar India Private Limited, positioning AI as a structural reset for the country’s $30-billion media and entertainment (M&E) industry.

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, Shankar argued that AI presents India with a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to break through longstanding capital and scale constraints that have kept Indian content largely confined to domestic audiences.

India’s M&E sector has expanded dramatically over the past quarter century—from a handful of broadcasters to nearly 900 television channels across dozens of languages, over 210 million TV households, and more than 800 million video viewers. The industry’s economic contribution now exceeds $30 billion, making it the fifth-largest media market globally. Yet, despite this scale, India accounts for less than 2% of the nearly $3-trillion global media market, which is projected to grow to $3.5 trillion by 2029.

Shankar said the gap is not due to a lack of talent or cultural depth, but structural limitations. While major Hollywood films command budgets of $65 million to $100 million—and tentpole productions can reach $300 million or more—the average Indian film is produced at a fraction of that cost. The disparity is equally stark in television, where a single episode of a marquee U.S. series can cost as much as $20 million to $30 million.

India’s monetisation universe, he noted, remains largely domestic, limiting the industry’s ability to attract global capital. This has created a cycle in which constrained budgets limit global competitiveness, which in turn restricts capital inflows. Paradoxically, India’s technical expertise—particularly in VFX and production services—often powers major Western projects, while domestic producers struggle to afford similar scale.

Rewiring content, consumer, and commerce

AI, Shankar said, could dismantle this ceiling by fundamentally rewiring the three core pillars of the industry: content, consumer engagement, and commerce.

On the content side, AI-powered production tools are already reducing turnaround times and improving efficiency. Shankar cited JioStar’s recent 100-episode live-action series, Mahabharat – Ek Dharmayudh, which he said achieved global-scale visual depth several times faster than traditional production pipelines, with meaningful cost efficiencies. As infrastructure barriers fall, the primary constraints become imagination and creativity rather than capital intensity.

In consumer engagement, AI enables a shift from a one-directional broadcast model to interactive and conversational experiences. Advanced personalisation, contextual discovery, and deeper regional adaptation—beyond simple dubbing and subtitling—could strengthen viewer relationships in a market as diverse as India’s.

Perhaps the most transformative impact, however, may lie in commerce. Since the advent of newspapers, media monetisation has relied largely on advertising and subscriptions. For a market of 800 million viewers with sharply differing income profiles, Shankar described these as blunt instruments. AI-driven segmentation could allow dynamic pricing and customised packaging that better reflect consumption patterns and affordability, potentially unlocking new revenue categories.

Even a modest increase in India’s global media revenue share—from under 2% to 4% or 5%—would translate into tens of billions of dollars in incremental value creation, Shankar said. But he cautioned that opportunity alone does not guarantee outcomes.

Skilling, policy, and the global opportunity

He urged incumbents to proactively embrace AI rather than resist it, recalling earlier industry transitions—from digital newsrooms to streaming—where established players initially defended legacy models. Unlike Hollywood, which is currently navigating legal disputes and labour tensions around AI adoption, India has fewer legacy constraints and can design forward-looking revenue models that balance the interests of creators, technicians, and producers.

Shankar also called for large-scale skilling to develop “AI-native” creative professionals—individuals who combine storytelling capabilities with fluency in advanced tools. India’s deep creative traditions and engineering talent pool, he said, must be fused through sustained investment in training and upskilling.

On policy, he emphasised that regulation in the early stages of AI adoption should act as an enabler rather than a brake. Frameworks must reflect India’s ambitions rather than replicate Western regulatory models wholesale, he said, arguing that early guardrails will have a multiplier effect on long-term competitiveness.

Hosting the summit in New Delhi, Shankar added, carries symbolic and strategic weight. For decades, the intersection of technology and media has been dominated by a handful of countries and corporations. With AI lowering barriers across the value chain, the competitive advantage may shift from those with the deepest pockets to those with the greatest entrepreneurial agility and cultural depth.

“The stories have always been here,” Shankar said. “Now the scale of capital and the power of technology are finally aligned. The race has just begun.”