WAVES 2025 NDTV Exclusive: Why Nikkhil Advani Thinks History Needs A "Sexy" Makeover
India's creator economy is at a tipping point, with the potential to emerge as a global hub for storytelling. But the ambition, according to key industry voices, must go beyond replicating old formulas. It requires identifying gaps, thinking hyper-locally, and scaling creatively for international relevance.
Speaking to NDTV's Editor-in-Chief, Sanjay Pugalia, on the second day of the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES), Gaurav Gandhi, Vice President of Amazon Prime Video, reflected on the platform's eight-year journey in India.
He said, "Our journey with Prime Video India has been over eight years. It's been amazing for us - full of learning and a lot of love from customers." He added, "When we started, we realised that to make an impact in India, you have to think local. As a market and as a country, we are so diverse that there's no single definition of 'local'. So, we had to think in multiple ways - local tastes, local languages, local milieu."
This approach, he said, was rooted in identifying what the Indian ecosystem lacked. He shared, "The first gap was the absence of high cinematic-value storytelling in India, which was already present internationally. The second gap was in movies - while we made a lot of them, there weren't enough theatres to screen them. The third was that everyone was locked into their own language. Keeping these three things in mind, we tried to bridge the gaps."
Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane pointed out how the rise of streaming platforms has given creators the freedom they didn't have 10 to 15 years ago.
He stated, "From where we were 10-15 years ago - when there was only one format and films were made only for the big screen - to now, the landscape has changed entirely," he said. "Platforms like Prime Video and other streaming services have given creators the freedom to think beyond just a two-hour film in a theatre. Now you can make a crime series with multiple seasons and episodes. You can do a comedy series, something like Jubilee or Mumbai Diaries - there's so much freedom to tell stories."
Motwane believes India is still in the early stages of this shift. He added, "We're at a stage where filmmakers are discovering this freedom and just going for it. But I don't think we've reached the point where we've fully taken advantage of it yet. When that happens, the next step will be to create stories that not only work in India but also travel globally. That's when we'll truly enter the next generation of Indian storytelling," he said. "Ten to fifteen years ago, people thought Indian content meant only Bollywood. That stereotype has broken, and over time, it will continue to break with different types of shows, films, and creators."
Director Nikkhil Advani, who is currently busy with his upcoming revolutionaries, believes that historical storytelling must feel alive, not academic. "Whenever you're working on something related to a historical period, the richer and more authentic the material, the better the starting point," he said. "I did Rocket Boys, and now I'm working on Revolutionaries. It's always about the source material," he said.
Advani's approach is clear: entertain first, educate later. "In the case of Revolutionaries, I'm having a lot of fun making it. The first thing I say is, 'Let's make revolutionaries sexy. Let's have fun with it.' Because if you give people a history lesson, their reaction is usually, 'nahi sunna hai, nahi dekhna hai' (don't want to listen, don't want to watch)," he concluded.
According to the PMO, WAVES 2025 will host participants from over 90 countries, including more than 10,000 delegates, 1,000 creators, 300+ companies and 350+ startups.
The program features 42 plenary sessions, 39 breakout sessions, and 32 masterclasses covering broadcasting, infotainment, AVGC-XR, films and digital media.
India is also hosting its first Global Media Dialogue with ministerial participation from 25 countries. The WAVES Bazaar, a global e-marketplace, will connect over 6,100 buyers with 5,200 sellers across 2,100 projects.
NDTV is at the inaugural edition of the Waves Summit, currently on at the Jio World Centre in Mumbai. The event brings together the who's who of showbiz, creators, and everyone who's anyone in the world of entertainment in India and beyond. Catch all updates on NDTV.com, from May 1 to May 4.
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