WAVES 2025: India’s Streaming Ambitions Go Global [Part 1]
From policy vision to platform power, India signals it’s ready to lead the global attention economy—streaming, storytelling, and scale included.
Hey Streamers 👋,
A warm welcome to the 84th edition of the “Streaming in India” newsletter, your weekly news digest about streaming players, OTT trends, and analyses. If you are not already a subscriber, please sign up and join thousands of others who receive it directly in their inbox every Wednesday.
Agenda
WAVES 2025: India’s Streaming and Attention Economy at a Tipping Point
Content: From Volume to Global Vision
Monetization: Empowering the Creator Economy
Infrastructure: Connectivity, Capacity and New Platforms
And….Action!
Looking forward to meeting you at another edition of CABSAT starting next week from the 13th - 15th of May 2025 in Dubai!
WAVES 2025: India’s Streaming and Attention Economy at a Tipping Point
The inaugural World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit (WAVES 2025) in Mumbai marked a watershed moment for India’s media and entertainment (M&E) landscape. Jointly organized by India’s central government and the state of Maharashtra – and backed by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting – the four-day summit was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a flagship platform to position India as a global hub for content creation, investment, and digital innovation. Over 10,000 delegates from 90+ countries, including 1,000 creators and 350 startups, convened at the Jio World Centre for 140+ sessions spanning film, broadcasting, OTT streaming, gaming, animation (AVGC-XR), sports, and advertising tech.
The star-studded attendee list – from PM Modi and industrialist Mukesh Ambani to Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan – underscored the convergence of government and industry behind India’s digital and creator economy push. Major announcements at WAVES 2025, such as a new Indian Institute of Creative Technology (IICT) in Mumbai and multi-billion-rupee funding initiatives, signal that the creative sector (“orange economy”) is now firmly on India’s national innovation agenda. This newsletter is Part 1 of key takeaways from WAVES 2025 across content, monetization, infrastructure, global relevance, capital, and “screens,” explaining why this summit heralds a tipping point for operators and entrepreneurs targeting India’s digital audiences.
Content: From Volume to Global Vision
India’s content creation engine is already one of the world’s largest – producing over 200,000 hours of original content annually, including some 1,600 films, 2,600 hours of premium OTT series, 190,000 hours of TV programming, and 20,000 songs each year. This massive output, driven by a boom in regional storytelling and digital media, has made India a “studio to the world,” as a recent EY report put it. At WAVES 2025, however, the emphasis was not just on volume but on elevating Indian content’s global appeal and cultural impact.
In his inaugural address, PM Modi lauded India’s “timeless treasure” of stories and described the creative economy as vital for both cultural soft power and economic growth. He noted that Indian films are now screened in over 100 countries and urged creators to imbue technology-driven storytelling with emotional depth and Indian values.
First Lady of Indian industry Nita Ambani echoed this vision in a keynote, encouraging creators to see Indian epics and folklore as globally exportable franchises: “Let our Amar Chitra Kathas be the next Harry Potters. Let our Ramayana and Mahabharata light up silver screens across the world.”. This call to “Create in India” – a creative-economy twist on the “Make in India” mantra – signals a strategic shift: India aims to become not just a high-volume content producer, but a net exporter of compelling IP and stories to the world.
Crucially, WAVES showcased content innovation spanning traditional and new media forms. Bollywood legends (Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Rajinikanth and others) shared the stage with YouTubers and game designers, highlighting continuity from cinema’s legacy to the streaming era. Sessions bridged “from cinema to streaming,” reflecting how digital platforms are extending the reach of Indian narratives.
For instance, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos discussed India’s importance in the global OTT strategy (with hits like RRR bringing Indian cinema to Western audiences), while YouTube’s Neal Mohan noted that content made in India amassed 45 billion hours of watch time from international audiences in 2023. Emerging formats were featured too – from animation and immersive VR content to sports entertainment – emphasizing that India’s storytelling now spans all mediums or “screens.” The fusion of creative storytelling with cutting-edge tech was a recurring theme. “The convergence of technology and storytelling will place India’s creators at the forefront of a global content revolution,” Mukesh Ambani observed, highlighting opportunities in AI-driven and immersive content creation.
Overall, WAVES 2025 signaled that India’s content strategy is maturing: leveraging its unparalleled scale and diversity in content production while raising quality and global resonance. For Indian creators and media-tech companies, this is an empowering message – their local stories and innovations are now seen as central to the country’s global soft power and will enjoy stronger institutional support to go global.
Monetization: Empowering the Creator Economy
A key focus of WAVES 2025 was how to translate India’s creative output and huge online audiences into sustainable monetization and livelihoods for creators, media startups, and platforms. The timing is critical – although India has over 4 million influencers/creators (a 322% increase since 2020), only 8–10% currently monetize their content effectively. Recognizing this “monetization gap,” the Indian government used WAVES to unveil concrete measures to boost the creator economy’s earnings.
The Union I&B Ministry announced a $1 billion Creator Economy Fund to provide creators with access to capital, skill development, and production facilities. “A $1B fund will ensure our energetic creators can upgrade their production levels and reach global markets,” said Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, describing the fund’s goals. In parallel, the government is establishing the Indian Institute of Creative Technology, a new national center of excellence for AVGC (Animation, VFX, Gaming, Comics) and digital arts, to train the next generation of creative talent. These moves formalize support for creators as entrepreneurs, not just as artists.
Global platforms are also investing heavily in India’s creator monetization ecosystem. At WAVES, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan committed ₹850 crore (over $100 million) over the next two years to help Indian creators “professionalise their content and scale their businesses.” This investment will go into expanding YouTube’s infrastructure and partnerships in India, as well as training initiatives for emerging creators.
Mohan revealed that YouTube has paid ₹21,000 crore (≈$2.5 billion) to Indian creators, artists and media companies over the past three years alone, underscoring how monetization via advertising revenue shares and partnerships is already a multi-billion dollar force in India. He hailed India as a burgeoning “Creator Nation” where online creators are becoming cultural ambassadors and significant earners. Other players are following suit: for example, a recent Economic Times report noted that YouTube plans to invest ₹850+ crore and Instagram/Facebook are likewise ramping up creator monetization tools in India. Brands, too, are set to spend more – a Boston Consulting Group study launched at WAVES projected that brands will increase influencer marketing spends by 1.5–3× in coming years, given creators now influence over 30% of consumer purchase decisions in India.
Alongside advertising and brand partnerships, new monetization models were highlighted as growth areas. Short-form video apps and live streaming platforms in India have popularized virtual gifting, fan subscriptions, and social commerce. The BCG report estimates that the creator ecosystem’s direct revenues (currently ~$20–25 billion) could reach $100+ billion by 2030 with the rise of such consumer-funded models.
At WAVES, startups demonstrated interactive e-commerce streams and gamified content that blend entertainment with shopping – indicating the future lies in blurring lines between content and commerce. Government officials stated their ambition to make India a net exporter of digital content and services, launching the WAVES Bazaar global e-marketplace where Indian creators can pitch and sell content internationally. All these initiatives point to a pivotal moment: Indian creators, who until recently largely relied on foreign platforms and ad-hoc brand deals, will now benefit from structured investment, formal skills training, and diversified monetization channels. For media-tech entrepreneurs (whether running an OTT app, an influencer startup, or an ad-tech platform), the message is that capital and policy support are finally aligning with India’s immense digital creator base. Monetization is moving from an informal, fragmented playing field to an organized industry where a talented YouTuber from Kochi or a game streamer from Bengaluru can realistically turn their passion into a sustainable, scalable business backed by funds, incubators, and even an eventual IPO.
Infrastructure: Connectivity, Capacity and New Platforms
Behind India’s digital media boom is a story of infrastructure – not only physical broadband networks and devices (“hard” infrastructure), but also institutional support and human capital (“soft” infrastructure). WAVES 2025 addressed both dimensions as India eyes its next phase of growth. On the physical front, India’s dramatic improvement in digital connectivity underpins everything from streaming to gaming. Over the last 5–7 years, affordable 4G data (spearheaded by Jio’s telecom revolution) brought 700+ million Indians online, creating the world’s second-largest streaming market by users.
Mukesh Ambani highlighted that “under Modi ji’s visionary leadership, India has become a front-ranking digital nation”, crediting initiatives that have made data accessible and cheap. This extensive internet infrastructure means any new content platform or OTT service can instantly reach hundreds of millions of potential viewers – a scale rivaled only by China. The summit underscored plans to further boost capacity: 5G networks are rolling out to enable high-quality video and low-latency gaming streams; public Wi-Fi and rural broadband programs aim to connect the next 200 million users; and cloud data centers (including those by global players like AWS, Google) are expanding in India to support the data-intensive needs of streaming and AI-driven media services.
Equally important, WAVES showcased institutional infrastructure being put in place for the creative economy. The newly announced IICT in Mumbai will serve as a national hub for AVGC-XR sectors, offering specialized education in animation, visual effects, game design, and extended reality. Notably, it is being set up in collaboration with tech giants like NVIDIA, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, ensuring cutting-edge curriculum and R&D support. Modeled on India’s prestigious IITs/IIMs, IICT is poised to supply the talent pipeline needed for a fast-growing creative tech industry. Similarly, to bolster regional production capacity, WAVES concluded with announcements of new physical infrastructure: a major film city campus in Maharashtra and an entertainment tech hub in Andhra Pradesh (through public-private partnerships) will add studios, post-production facilities, and incubation spaces for filmmakers and gaming companies. These hubs, coupled with incentives, aim to distribute content creation beyond Mumbai to emerging creative clusters across India.
One striking infrastructure development is the formal integration of India’s creative industries with its financial markets and policy frameworks. During the summit, the National Stock Exchange launched a Nifty WAVES Index tracking 43 M&E companies across film, TV, digital platforms, music and gaming. This index provides investors a benchmark to track the creative economy’s performance, reflecting its coming-of-age as a recognized economic sector. As demand for digital content soars, such measures are meant to catalyze data-driven investments into media ventures, making it easier for entertainment startups to attract capital and eventually go public.
Additionally, the government released a first-ever white paper on India’s live events industry at WAVES, analyzing trends from music concerts to esports tournaments and recommending infrastructure upgrades (e.g. world-class arenas, event tourism promotion) to support this segment’s growth. By addressing everything from broadband to stock indices, India is signaling that the entire ecosystem – tech, talent, and policy – is being aligned to support the digital/creative economy.
This holistic infrastructure build-out creates a strong foundation for entrepreneurs: today’s OTT app developer or sports-tech startup in India can leverage nationwide high-speed internet, a growing pool of skilled creative tech workers, and even government-provided platforms (like the WAVES Bazaar marketplace) to accelerate their business. Watch this space for Part 2 next week which includes Global Relevance: Soft Power and International Playbook, Capital: Investment Flows and Startup Ecosystem and Screens and Convergence: The Multi-Platform Battlefield amongst other analyses!
We just started watching “The Four Seasons” on Netflix - The decades-long friendship between three married couples is tested when one divorces, complicating their tradition of quarterly weekend getaways. Awesome to see Steve Carell, Tina Fey etc back on screen after ages! Must watch.
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