MUMBAI, May 4 -- "Television remains healthy in India, the surge in streaming is spectacular but to expand the country's $30 billion video entertainment industry, we need to make more content customised for this market, go deeper with distribution and build creative infrastructure," said Uday Shankar, vice chairman of JioStar and co-founder of Bodhi Tree Systems. Shankar was in a fireside chat with Vivek Couto, executive director, Media Partners Asia, on the third day of the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES 2025) in Mumbai. Couto said though India's video industry has come a long way from $500 million 25 years ago to $30 billion today, it is way behind China at $75 billion and the US at $200 billion. Referring to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan's announcement at WAVES of the Rs.850 crore investment that the company will make in India's burgeoning creator economy, Couto asked Shankar about investments by JioStar, which was formed by the merger of Viacom18 (owned by Reliance Industries and Bodhi Tree Systems) and Star India (owned by The Walt Disney Company). "Consumers don't need to worry about investments, but since you asked, the two media and entertainment companies that came together to form JioStar, have invested $10 billion in content alone in the Indian market in the last three years," Shankar said. India's media and entertainment (M&E) industry is not limited by capital or audiences as 750 million people watch streaming content in some form or the other every day, he said. But to maintain the pace of growth for the next 15 years, India needs to create content tailored for the local market, Shankar said. "We have to take distribution deeper just as the data revolution is going deeper into the country." And then he expressed a caveat for content - one-size cannot fit all and it cannot only be produced in Mumbai. "Like I said, we are not limited by capital but our capacity to access new storytellers and writers," Shankar added. He said foreign content being pushed in India has its limitations. "If content has to meet the aspirations and requirements of this country, then you have to start making lots more locally, tailored to Indian tastes and ideally travel to the world," he said. When Couto prodded him about India's ailing film industry, Shankar argued that only the Hindi film industry had declined, while southern language cinema has seen a creative resurgence which has also translated into profits. "Bollywood is frozen in time. It has kept its gates closed to new content producers, directors and writers. 90% of the talent in Hindi film industry is 60 years old while 65% of the country is under 35 years. So there's a consumer disconnect," Shankar said. Additionally, he said, film distribution is poor with a shortage of screens making it an expensive proposition to watch films in theatres in a price sensitive country like India. Overall, the M&E industry suffers from lack of innovation in both content and monetization models, Shankar said, referring to the traditional print media, TV, as also OTT. With a bigger slice of advertising being taken away by technology companies, e-commerce platforms and social media, there is pressure on ad revenue in media. "The real opportunity for Indian companies lies in innovating on new revenue models," Shankar said....