Latest news with #WorldAudioVisualandEntertainmentSummit
Time of India
2 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Digital now accounts for over 55 per cent of advertisement expenditure: I&B Secretary Jaju
HighlightsDigital media now accounts for over 55 percent of the national advertising expenditure in India, according to Information and Broadcasting Secretary Sanjay Jaju. India's digital advertising market is projected to exceed Rs 70,000 crore by 2026, driven by the increasing number of smartphone users and affordable data rates. Sanjay Jaju emphasized the importance of leveraging artificial intelligence and immersive technologies to enhance India's storytelling capabilities in the evolving media and entertainment landscape. Digital now dominates the media and entertainment sector accounting for over 55 per cent of the national advertising expenditure, Information and Broadcasting Secretary Sanjay Jaju said here on Friday. He said that over 55 crore smartphone users were a key factor in the shifting dynamics in consumption in the media and entertainment sector. "The digital segment is now definitely more than the non-digital segment," said Jaju addressing Storyboard18's Digital Entertainment Summit (DES) 2025. He said the industry must now enable the segment "to grow at a much brisker pace". While India has long been a creative powerhouse, Jaju stressed the digital medium has become central to its global aspirations. "Digital entertainment, being the core theme... has a huge share in the overall media and entertainment landscape," he said, noting the growing importance of streaming platforms , gaming companies, animation and post-production studios, and the creator economy. Jaju said the Indian media and entertainment industry has been undergoing rapid digitization, fueled by affordable data rates, deep smartphone penetration and growing internet access. According to various industry estimates, India's digital advertising market is poised to surpass Rs 70,000 crore by 2026. He said events such as the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit, organized by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, aim to position India as a global content and technology hub. Such events seek to unite stakeholders across tech, film, gaming, streaming and social media to co-create and export India's soft power to the world, he said. "Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI has been transforming every aspect of our life... from editing to dubbing to music production to animation. The media and entertainment landscape is also bound to get affected," Jaju said. He emphasized on the need to leverage immersive technologies to amplify India's storytelling capabilities. "We need to be also embracing large number of technological trends which are happening, these trends are going to shape the digital entertainment landscape as well," Jaju said. PTI
New Indian Express
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
‘Create in India Challenge' participants at WAVES to get jobs and career help
NEW DELHI: The Centre is working on a comprehensive roadmap to help the participants of the 'Create in India Challenge', a highlight of the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES), secure employment and career opportunities. This initiative signals a strong push to nurture creative talent in sectors such as animation, comics, AI, extended reality, gaming, and music in India. The government will be holding discussions with leading industry associations and organisations, which hosted 32 challenges covering a wide range of disciplines including animation, filmmaking, gaming, music, and visual arts in the run up to the event. During the inaugural edition of WAVES in May, around 750 finalists were invited to exhibit their projects and skills at 'Creatosphere', a specially designed platform to highlight cutting-edge innovation and creativity in India's media and entertainment landscape. 'A roadmap is being worked out to ensure the winners of CIC get gainful employment or regular jobs. The government will help them to showcase or sell their content. It will be checked whether Intellectual property (IP) rights can be generated for their content. The efforts are also being made to see if the companies can offer them employment opportunities,' said sources. According to the industry representatives, the initiative will take WAVES to the next level as envisioned by PM Narendra Modi. Comparing the WAVES to global events, Modi termed it a great opportunity to showcase India's creative talent to the world. Some have also suggested nominating brand ambassadors for the Summit expected to be held in February and start a fellowship programme focused on expanding its reach and impact. Though the discussions are at nascent stage, one of the few possibilities to showcase creative talent of CIC winners is to arrange their participation in international events like roadshows. 'To build excitement, several smaller state-level related events can be organised. They can be permanent verticals of the WAVES. Suggestions are also being sought from associations and industry on how to boost their confidence,' said sources. The flagship initiative of WAVES, the CIC garnered significant traction nationwide and globally, with 32 challenges, including Truth Tell Hackathon, Comics Creator Championship, Esports Tournament, Trailer Making Competition and Anime Challenge for which the ministry of information and broadcasting (I&B) received nearly one lakh registration including over 1,100 international entries from 60 countries.
Mint
07-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
For Sai Srinivas of Mobile Premier League, the game is always on
It's easy for people to put a value to a loss they've had," says Garimella Sai Srinivas Kiran, the co-founder of gaming company M-League, which runs the Mobile Premier League (MPL). '(But) It's hard to put a value to these intangible gains, right? You only notice them in the long term. In the short term, you only see the pain." Startup founders tend to be philosophical, a by-product of betting big on a non-existent product and making it work, despite the obstacles and the body blows. The seven-year-old skill-gaming platform MPL. which has free and paid components and a portfolio of over 60 games, probably does not qualify as a startup anymore, but tends to fall into the bracket by virtue of being a tech company. M-League, which now has five companies including the Berlin-based GameDuell, has a portfolio that includes skill gaming, free-to-play games, game publishing and AAA game studio (high-budget, high-profile games). With over 220 million users across MPL and GameDuell in 32 countries, a unicorn valuation as of the last fund raise in 2021, presence in Asia, Europe, North America and Africa, and 600-odd employees, the company straddles the challenging business of skill gaming. Its revenue in FY24 was $130 million. Sai was in Mumbai in early May for the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (Waves), a government-sponsored event. In the business centre of the Sofitel Hotel in Bandra Kurla Complex, close to the venue for Waves where MPL had a booth, the 37-year-old, dressed casually in a collared T-shirt, slacks and a cap, orders an Americano. He has an easy-going manner, and a dimpled boyish smile that he uses liberally. Sai is temporarily stationed in Singapore these days, where M-League is headquartered, while his co-founder Shubh Malhotra and Galactus Funware Technology Pvt Ltd, the operating entity for MPL, are based in Bengaluru. Since losing his father last year, Sai says he has started valuing his time more and separating his professional and personal identities. 'One of my core philosophies in life is anonymity. I want to focus on my business," he explains. 'I really enjoy travelling; I can travel literally 60 days with one suitcase, keep moving from one place to the other." Born in Hyderabad—his father was a deputy manager in a bank, mother a teacher in a government school—Sai's academic journey fell into two innings. He was 'not very good" in the beginning, but an inexplicable switch turned after class VI. By the time he reached the board exam stage, he wanted to study aerospace engineering. Also read: What Siddharth Roy Kapur wants: Fresh stories told in unique voices He got into IIT Kanpur which had, among other things, a dedicated leased line for fast (for those times) internet speed. However, he soon became disenchanted with the education system there and his enthusiasm for making aircraft withered away. 'For people coming from a normal background like us, the first important level of freedom we need to attain is mastery of our time," says Sai, who graduated in 2010 as one of the few in his batch without a campus placement. One of his highlights at IIT turned out to be organising the cultural festival, Antaragni, which included the music festival Synchronicity. What this first, quasi-entrepreneurial voluntary role did was to get him access to his first job, which was a brief stint as product manager with a digital company in Delhi. He was soon recruited by Zynga in Bengaluru as a game designer, though he had no such experience. 'I played a lot of games while growing up," he admits. 'My dad and I were always particular about getting new gadgets, like the Nokia 3310 and the (gaming console) Super Nintendo." Zynga, with its popular game Farmville, was going 'absolute gangbusters" at the time, which put Sai in the 'right place, right time". It also helped that he didn't like Delhi too much and moving to Bengaluru was not a challenge. The third benefit, unbeknownst to him at the time, was that the friend's place he temporarily stayed at had another roommate, Malhotra. A year-and-a-half later, Sai and Malhotra got ready with their first venture, CREO Tech. Their first product, Tewee, was a wireless HDMI dongle to stream videos over a Wi-Fi network, like the Amazon Firestick. The idea seemed to fit in at a time when streaming services were making their forays into the country. 'We were foolish enough to say let's make hardware," he says now. 'We used to download these documents in Chinese and spend days translating them and figuring out what they hacked our way to getting the product out." They sold over 50,000 units, but making hardware was challenging. Other similar products were getting into the market; the duo realised they needed to pivot. In the company of some 'smart engineers" they hired through their college network, their next venture was an Android-based operating system and smartphone, which also turned out to be an error in hindsight. 'I'll tell you the problem with making a phone and with hardware in general," he says. 'For example, let's assume I ship software and I left a bug in it. I'm just going to patch the software and I'll fix it. Life is okay, all good. With hardware, even if you make one mistake, the amount of time it's going to take to correct that mistake in the next iteration and then get it right—it's just massive." After several struggles, managing to make only a few thousand of the product Creo Mark 1, they sold the company to messenger service Hike in 2016-17. 'If a river is flowing downstream and you're standing on the bank and you see this guy on a boat going really fast, you tend to assume that it's the person rowing. But it's actually the underlying river. That's the market: If you're in the right place, right time, right market, even if you are really stupid, you'll be okay," says Sai. After going through a period of angst, when they felt like they would never work together again, Malhotra and Sai made a deal not to have friends as employees, and that 'the outcome is always more important than output". Having decided that their next turn would be in the field of online gaming, because of his experience in the field, the newly formed Galactus Funware went live with the MPL in September 2018. With about $5.5 million ( ₹36.5 crore at the time) at the get-go, a fairly large seed round, from Sequoia Capital, their ascent was rapid—a term sheet in April, an early team by May and the first prototype by July. A friends and family round by end of August leading up to the launch. By December, MPL had a million daily active users. But the challenges were continuous and constant. In May 2019, MPL was kicked out of the Play Store due to Google's developer policy (it relaxed its policy on real-money gaming last year), along with other gaming platforms like Dream11. 'We would be the only company in India's ecosystem that started, raised a lot of money, got to a million daily active users and shut its doors within the year," Sai says grinning. Then by the second half of 2019 they almost ran out of money, looking to raise a bridge round which came in the form of $90m led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital. '2019 for me was the most foundationally painful year. If Creo was tough from a different standpoint, this was toughness induced by my own stupidity," he says. Cricketer Virat Kohli came on board as their brand ambassador. The following year, MPL signed on with the Board of Control for Cricket in India to be the kit sponsor for the Indian team. With the pandemic, the founders had to navigate working remotely, and between 2020-21, the company went from 120 employees to 1,200, perhaps hiring too many people too fast. 'In my 10 years of doing start-ups, I believe, that is the most unpardonable mistake," he admits. As MPL went global, especially into the US in July 2021, and acquired European company GameDuell in early 2022, 'one of the smartest things to have done", it also laid off 10% of its force and shut down its Indonesia office. But the business, on the back of the pandemic-induced lockdown that catalysed the online gaming industry, grew by 50%. Just when 2023 seemed on the up, hitting 200 million users and a foray into Africa, the government in August announced a 28% GST on funds online gaming companies collect from customers. Mint had in November quoted a report by gaming-focused venture capital firm Lumikai, which had India's gaming market growing 23% year-on-year by revenue to $3.8 billion in 2023-24 despite 28% GST on online gaming. Propelled by the pandemic-induced lockdowns, online gaming is booming, despite some amount of social stigma, and some legal battles, most of which have been dismissed by the courts. 'We looked at this entire GST thing and said this is essentially the start line being redrawn," remembers Sai. MPL laid off 350 employees—half of its force—to survive the tax burden in 2023. Recovery was aided by GameDuell, which helped grow revenue more than three times. MPL started to take off in the US and Brazil, with 40% of its current revenues coming from abroad. 'It's a personal ambition that we want to build a product that stands globally," Sai explains. 'The professional ambition is that things are evolving in a developing country, so there is no certainty for a business to thrive." While MPL as a business competes with platforms like WinZO and Zupee among others, it is more comparable to Nazara Technologies, which is publicly listed. Sai, though, prefers to see his competition coming from Chinese gaming conglomerate Tencent. As he gets ready to head back to Waves, he talks about reading, spending a lot of time just being idle, really enjoying the mundane. 'One of the reasons why I enjoy living in Singapore," he says thoughtfully, 'or spending time with my partner in Dubai, is that in India, these amazing pleasures of doing your own domestic chores have been taken away thanks to the massive amount of help, which is great. But I really enjoy doing my breakfast, putting my clothes in these daily rituals." Also read: Vaibhav Kala of Aquaterra Adventures: The outdoors man
NDTV
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NDTV
No Points For Guessing Who Formed Kareena Kapoor's "Own Band People" After She Missed Guns N Roses Show
New Delhi: Kareena Kapoor might have missed Guns N Roses but her own "Band people" made it up. On Monday morning, Kareena Kapoor shared two pictures on her Instagram Stories, setting the Internet on fire. In the pictures, Saif Ali Khan and his elder son Taimur can be seen jamming. While Saif faces the camera, Taimur is seen seated with his back to the camera. In the first picture, Kareena Kapoor wrote, "Might have missed Guns N Roses." In the second one, "But I Got My Own Band People." For the unversed, Guns N Roses performed in India after a 12-year hiatus and in Mumbai on May 17, 2025 at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse. Kareena referred to the concert, implying she has missed the show. Earlier this month, Kareena Kapoor took part at the inaugural edition of the WAVES ( World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit). During a conversation with Karan Johar and Vijay Deverakonda, Kareena Kapoor shared an anecdote when the Lincoln director recognised her and complimented her. "I was actually in a restaurant, I am travelling somewhere. Steven Spielberg was eating at the same restaurant. This was many moons ago, when 3 Idiots had just released. He actually came up to me and told me that, "Are you that girl who was in that very famous Indian film about three students?" I said, "Yes, that's me." He said, "My god. I loved that movie." "I didn't need to act in an English film for him to see me. He watched 3 Idiots. That's a moment for us," Kareena Kapoor said while beaming with pride. On the work front, Kareena Kapoor was last seen in the multi-starrer Singham Again. She was also seen in Crew last year.
Time of India
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
City students bag prize for short film in nat'l contest
Ludhiana: Young filmmakers Mahi Saluja and Rabbya Wadhwa , both from Ludhiana and students of Class IX, have won the second prize in the WAVES Young Filmmakers Challenge in the junior category. It was organised by the information and broadcasting ministry, GoI. The competition formed a key highlight of the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES 2025), hosted at the Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai. Mahi and Rabbya's thought-provoking short film on the theme of humanity and technology earned national acclaim, making it to the top 10 finalists and winning them a coveted spot in the grand finale. Jubilant on return after receiving the award in Mumbai, Mahi and Rabbya said they were surprised that the film was selected among the top 10 from entries from across the country. The award was conferred upon the finalists by L Murugan, MoS (information and broadcasting and parliamentary affairs), and veteran actor Anupam Kher. The summit was inaugurated by PM Narendra Modi, who described WAVES as "a wave of culture, creativity, and universal connectivity." Commending the young talents, Anuja Kaushal, principal of their school, BCM Arya Model School, stated, "This remarkable accomplishment showcases the creativity, expression, and innovation that our students bring to life when provided with the right opportunities. We are incredibly proud of Mahi and Rabbya for bringing national recognition and inspiring their peers.
