India's Media, Entertainment Industry Grows at Robust Pace


New Delhi: Growing annually at a robust pace of 17.1 percent over the next four years, India's media and entertainment industry is expected to top 1.75 trillion ($33 billion) with reducing dominance of print and television mediums, says a new study. The Indian media and entertainment industry is also the fastest growing segment globally with the expansion largely coming from the new media space, says the joint study by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. "The growth is mainly coming from the burgeoning Internet segment that has the potential to outshine the print sector by 2014," says the study titled "The India Entertainment and Media Outlook 2012" to be released here Monday at the "India-Big Picture" Summit. "Working to attain the target of $100 billion in the coming years will not only benefit industry but also create large-scale employment and help achieve India's goal of being a knowledge driven economy through effective media," said CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee. "Increased advertising, consumer spend will take the industry to desired heights. This will be fuelled by technological innovation leading to better quality of media content being consumed. added Smita Jha, leader of entertainment and media practice at PwC. According to the study, advertising spend contributes some 35 percent of revenues. But, compared to other countries, the advertising spend as a percentage of GDP is very low at 0.3 percent. "We expect that with entertainment content being accessed through different mediums and innovation in digital content will drive the advertising spend," the study said, adding key consumer spends included TV subscription, film admissions and print circulation. "The average annual spend per capita is at a low of $7 in India, as compared to $22 in China and $65 in Brazil. Rising disposable incomes in India, combined with some macro economic stability, will drive rapid growth in consumer spend," the study said. In 2011, the overall entertainment and media industry was estimated at 80,000 crore ($15.4 billion), an increase of 17.5 percent over the previous year. TV and print were the largest contributors, accounting for 66 percent of total revenues. "Internet access also contributed a significant 14 percent driven by increasing adoption of mobile internet. However, the contribution from print and film segments have reduced marginally, as year-on-year growth rates have been lower than the industry average." Internet access and gaming have been the fastest growing segments, with an annual growth rate of 57 percent and 33 percent respectively. The gaming segment has been growing due to the rising popularity of mobile and online and social media gaming. "Television, being the largest segment, has been the highest contributor in terms of revenue addition to the industry, with an annual growth rate of 16 percent," the study said.
Source: IANS