India’s Creative Pool: From Outsourcing Hub to Global Trendsetter
Avinash Singh
A decade ago, in the global media and entertainment landscape, India was known mainly as an outsourcing base for post-production; today it is lifting the biggest film trophies, topping streaming leader-boards, smashing e-sports viewership records, introducing hit cartoon characters and lifting top prizes at popular cosplay gatherings. These converging signals prove that India’s creative energy now travels on its own merit and investors, distributors and fans are responding.
This trend was impossible to ignore in 2024 when Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light became the first Indian film to capture Cannes’ Grand Prix, second only to the Palme d’Or. Just twelve months earlier, Indian music and documentary craft conquered Hollywood. “Naatu Naatu”, the exuberant Telugu song from RRR, danced off with Best Original Song the first ever for an Indian production and Kartiki Gonsalves’ The Elephant Whisperers won Documentary Short at the 95th Oscars. These victories proved that stories in Indian languages can hook mainstream audiences worldwide.
Streaming data tell the same story in figures: Indian dramas occupied 34 of Netflix’s 48 global non-English Top-10 slots in 2024. On the children’s front, Hyderabad-based Green Gold’s Mighty Little Bheem remains Netflix’s most-watched pre-school original, viewed by more than 27 million households and once crowned the platform’s top “international release” in the United States.
Interactive entertainment is surfing the same wave. The Battlegrounds Mobile India Pro Series 2024 final drew a BGMI-record 494,000 peak concurrent viewers and 11 million hours watched, cementing India’s reputation as the world’s largest mobile-e-sports arena. Confidence is sky-high: a January 2025 AFK Gaming poll found six in ten industry leaders expecting their income to jump by double digits this year, thanks to new game launches and a flood of fresh players. Even The Game Awards gaming’s Oscar night has renewed its exclusive India stream with NODWIN Gaming, giving local fans a front-row seat to the action.
Animation and anime are finding their voices too. Studio Durga’s Karmachakra is billed as the first independent Indian anime feature, signalling a move from service work to original storytelling. Meanwhile VFX giant DNEG claimed its eighth Oscar in 2025 for Dune: Part Two, keeping high-end post-production prestige firmly anchored in Mumbai, Chennai and Mohali.
Even the global cosplay scene now showcases Indian artistry: Team Agni captured the Prop-Making Award at the 2024 World Cosplay Summit, proof that Indian fans are not merely consuming Japanese pop culture but excelling at its most demanding art-form.
Taken together, these milestones form a narrative of creative confidence. They attract larger budgets, encourage bolder experiments and subtly rewrite how the world imagines India. For the next generation of film-makers, game designers, animators and performers, the message is unmistakable: home-grown stories that begin in Mumbai or Manipur can finish centre-stage everywhere else.
A Home Market Large Enough to Fund Ambition
The latest FICCI–EY survey shows that in 2024, India’s media-and-entertainment sector grew 3.3% to Rs. 2.5 trillion (US $30 billion), with digital media overtaking tele-vision to claim 32% of all revenue. Within that, digital advertising leapt 17% to Rs. 700 billion and already accounts for 55% of every advertising rupee spent in the country, while OTT subscriptions rose 15% to Rs. 102 billion, driven by 111 million paid video accounts spread across 47 million house-holds. Digital ad-spend is fore-cast to top the landmark Rs. 1 trillion threshold by 2026, and the whole sector is projected to reach Rs. 3.1 trillion by 2027.
Why does this matter for India’s global reach? Because the country’s massive audience lets platforms earn back their costs at home before anyone overseas presses ‘play’. That safety net encourages risk-taking, so Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ Hotstar now make shows for India first and only then dub or subtitle them for more than 30 other markets the reverse of the old days when India mainly got recycled foreign titles.
Growing Cross Border Collaborations
VFX Boom: Indian studios are growing in every direction, not just in size but in the way they work. Prime Focus, MPC, yFX and Phantom FX
now shoot on huge LED “volume” stages in Hyderabad’s Annapurna Studios and in Mumbai. These real-time sets similar to the ones used on The Mandalorian save crews a foreign trip and let directors swap a desert for a blizzard with one click.
Deals that share the risk and the reward: The new India-Colombia film treaty (Oct 2024) lets producers on both sides pool money and claim home-country tax breaks, just as early pacts did for Korea’s K-wave. Treaties with Australia and France are already signed, and talks with Canada and the UK are moving forward. Thanks to these rules, Payal Kapadia’s Cannes-winning All We Imagine as Light qualified for a 30% Indian cash rebate while tapping French funds for post-production.
Stories built by mixed teams: Streamers now run global writers’ rooms where Indian voices sit alongside U.S. show-runners. Examples range from Mindy Kaling’s Indo-American comedy Never Have I Ever to Indian consultants on Marvel’s Ms Marvel, while at home Sony’s Shark Tank India, Viacom18’s Bigg Boss and MasterChef India prove that foreign formats can thrive in desi style.
Concert fever – Big names such as Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran have added India to their world tours. Consultancy EY says the live-events market jumped 35% in 2024 and could hit US $1.7 billion by 2026 as more stadiums come on line. The same young fans who fill those arenas also binge local web-series on their phones, giving promoters and streamers a shared audience.
(The author is a senior journalist with vast experience in covering the media and entertainment sector. Feedback can be sent to feedback.employmentnews@gmail.com). Views expressed are personal