India has a lot to contribute to the AI revolution, says Netflix’s Monika Shergill on unlocking the country’s storytelling at scale

“We are a land of stories and storytellers, but when it comes to high-quality storytelling at scale, we’ve joined the journey a little late,” said Monika Shergill, vice president – Content at Netflix India at the WAVES Summit 2025 in a panel discussion on the revolution of OTT content.

Shergill highlighted a critical shift underway in Indian content creation. With increasing access to digital tools and platforms, the country’s vast human capital and creative potential is being unlocked like never before. Every fifth person in the world is an Indian, she said, adding, “With the tools that are coming, and with access that is beginning to happen, what storytelling can be unlocked at an individual level—and at scale—is going to be the most defining superpower for us.” 

But Shergill’s optimism came with a caveat: the need for “thoughtful and purpose-driven AI”. India’s digital revolution—marked by the responsible roll-out of technologies like UPI—has shown that scale doesn’t have to come at the cost of responsibility. “Even in the creative and entertainment revolution, the AI revolution, India has a lot to contribute in the long-term, and in a responsible way,” she said.

The rest of the panel, comprising leaders from Prime Video, JioStar, Sony Pictures Networks, and Hungama, echoed and expanded on this theme of balancing innovation with intent.

Neeraj Roy, managing director at Hungama Digital Media, pointed to the sheer scale of change underway. “[Amazon] Prime, Netflix—they were pioneers in bringing in search, recommendation, machine learning,” he said. “But that was a decade back. Now, in a world of GenAI, you’re at the cusp of something entirely different.” Roy noted that content is no longer finite or solely commissioned by platforms. “You are now going to get into a zone where 10 million creators are already creating, and then lace it with tools of GenAI, which have a life form of their own.”

Meanwhile, Bharath Ram, chief product officer at JioStar, focussed on the utility of AI in enhancing viewer engagement. “Just like any other piece of technology, personalisation and all these ML, AI concepts help platforms achieve a particular goal,” he said. JioStar uses personalisation metrics to optimise for how many months in a year a viewer stays active. “That’s the ratio we optimise for—monthly active viewers divided by annual active viewers. Personalisation helps in that.”

With hundreds of millions of hours of content entering the ecosystem, Roy raised a fundamental constraint: “Time is still finite. You still have 24 hours.” In a fragmented streaming market with over 30 platforms across genres, he sees competition intensifying—from global leaders to emerging regional storytellers. “In the next two to three years, we’re going to compete with extremely high-quality content coming from the creative economy.”

Gaurav Banerjee. MD & CEO of Sony Pictures Networks India, offered a slightly divergent view. “Our belief is in the power of storytelling to cut across all kinds of barriers,” he said.

Banerjee made a case for big bets and mass narratives. “This is the land of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata—stories that have transcended time and geography.” He pointed to the success of films like Pushpa 2 and Chhaava as proof that blockbusters can still unite audiences. “If you tell a story that matches the moment, the bar is raised higher than ever before.”

In that sense, the future of OTT might lie in the balance between hyper-personalisation and shared cultural moments—between AI-driven discovery and timeless narratives.