How Indian media is rewiring investments and unlocking new monetisation

India’s media and entertainment industry is moving beyond the old divide between television and digital, and instead media leaders are reallocating core capital toward long-term intellectual property (IP), proprietary data, and direct consumer technology to capture shrinking attention spans and insulate businesses from cyclical advertising swings.

Five years ago, capital was largely directed towards content development and distribution. Today, companies are looking to combine content with technology and data to capture consumer attention across a fragmented media landscape.

“We have moved away from TV, digital and those kind of things. So now attention is gone. And to capture the attention, we need to marry content, technology, data, all of that together to get the right output.” said Puneet Goenka, CEO, Zee Entertainment.

Kevin Vaz, CEO, Entertainment, JioStar, said that while capital earlier went heavily into development, companies are now investing behind technology and data to make content more meaningful and versatile.

"The next phase of modernisation or growth will not come from just modernising retention, but more from modernising intent," Vaz said, pointing out that audiences on streaming platforms now expect to interact, share, and transact directly on the screen rather than merely consume.

Adding to this, Gaurav Banerjee, managing director and CEO of Sony Pictures Networks India, highlighted the pivot away from short-term rights cycles. "Five years ago, what was the industry standing on? Number one, sports rights. Number two, the biggest movies. Where are we moving towards? Building and developing IP that earns you over the lifetime," Banerjee said.

For Gaurav Gandhi, vice president & head, Prime Video, Asia Pacific & Australia-New Zealand, the focus is on building an entertainment hub spanning free and paid audiences, while taking Indian content to the world and reaching deeper into India. He also pointed to the growing importance of technology in creating direct relationships with consumers and building communities around platforms.

Where do the next opportunities come from

The panelists see the next leg of growth coming from revenue streams beyond traditional advertising and subscriptions, particularly commerce, gamification and international monetisation.Vaz said technology is shifting the opportunity from simply modernising retention to “modernising intent”.

With large subscriber bases, media platforms can move consumers from watching and engaging to transacting. He cited emerging commerce models that allow viewers to order meals or groceries while consuming content, arguing that commerce could become a significant new revenue stream. Side by side, the other major opportunity is global.

While India’s macroeconomic growth of 6% to 6.5% over the past four decades provides a steady domestic baseline, Banerjee said that cross-border receptivity offers disproportionate upside. Highlighting a recent Punjabi release, he revealed that successful regional titles now generate as much as 40% of their total monetisation outside Indian borders.

On the flip side, Gandhi noted that Indian originals now consistently register viewership across 150 to 170 countries, racking up well over 200 billion viewing entries worldwide. He noted that modern platform hits are defined by cultural zeitgeist, community building, and franchisable cross-format value that pull users directly to platforms rather than relying on accidental search discovery.

Goenka, meanwhile, said technology would remain the enabler while entertainment remains at the heart of the business, spanning long-form dramas, cinema, micro-dramas, live entertainment and sports.