Uday Shankar flags need for fresh monetization models, warns against homogenized regulation

Mint

03-05-2025

Mumbai: At a time when India's media giants are pouring billions into content, Uday Shankar, co-founder of Bodhi Tree Systems and vice chairman of JioStar, warned that the investment surge risks falling short without deeper innovation in monetisation, regulation, and audience strategy.
Speaking at the Waves 2025 summit, Shankar laid out a clear-eyed assessment of the sector's challenges: a stagnant revenue model, a creatively stalled Bollywood, an aging leadership out of sync with India's youthful audience, and regulators who treat digital and television as one and the same. His call to action: rethink the business from the ground up—or risk squandering India's chance to build globally competitive media platforms.
In a conversation with Media Partners Asia's Vivek Couto, Shankar called the last three decades of Indian visual media 'one of the most spectacular stories in global media,' but cautioned that the sector cannot ride on legacy growth alone. 'The viewers are far ahead of the producers,' he said. 'We keep importing global models and expect them to work here. That's highly limiting.'
Shankar revealed that the combined entity of Reliance's Viacom18 and Disney Star has spent over ₹ 30,000 crore on content in 2025, up from ₹ 25,000 crore last year. The figure is expected to exceed ₹ 33,000 crore in 2026. 'That's over $10 billion in three years. This is real, targeted investment aimed entirely at the Indian consumer,' he said.
While major investments are flowing into both sports and entertainment, Shankar stressed that content alone won't suffice. 'There has been great innovation in content and distribution. But monetisation? Zero. It's still subscription and advertising. That was the model 70 years ago, and it's still the model today,' he said, underscoring the urgent need for new revenue streams. 'You cannot build a globally valuable media company without reinventing how you make money.'
Tracing the arc of India's video revolution, Shankar credited local entrepreneurship and domestic capital—not regulation or foreign investment—with building a deeply-penetrated video ecosystem. 'Satellite TV snuck in when there were no rules. It was built from the ground up, largely by Indian companies,' he said. Even global players like Star, he noted, had to 'Indianise' themselves fully.
He also challenged the narrative that pay TV is dead. Since the Disney-Viacom18 merger, he said, 'pay TV has added numbers, not lost them. The problem was we stopped feeding it.' He reaffirmed the group's commitment to both pay TV and streaming, adding that pricing and affordability must be central to any growth plan. 'If your ambition is to reach 300 million or half a billion people, you can't price like you're serving 15–20 million elite users.'
Citing JioHotstar's localisation push in sports—now streaming in Bhojpuri and Haryanvi in addition to major languages—Shankar said this has brought in new audiences and unlocked new revenue streams.
On the downturn in theatrical revenues, Shankar made a key distinction: 'It's the Hindi film industry that's in trouble, not the South.' Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada films, he noted, are in the midst of a creative resurgence that's also driving commercial success. 'Bollywood is still frozen in time. It has shut the gates to new talent and stayed disconnected from the new India.'
He flagged a generational disconnect in the industry: 'This is a country where 65% of the population is under 35. Yet 90% of the creative decision-makers are over 60.'
Shankar also highlighted the stark difference in theatrical pricing between the north and the south, observing that in many cities, moviegoing 'leaves a hole in your pocket.'
Shankar didn't hold back on regulation either.
'If media companies haven't innovated enough, regulators are even further behind,' he said. Treating all screens the same, he warned, is a flawed approach. 'Television is a household subscription. Digital is a personal screen. They're at very different stages of evolution. Homogenising them means destroying value in both.'
He argued that India's digital entertainment economy shouldn't be crammed into a one-size-fits-all regulatory model. 'Support where needed. But don't squeeze everything into the same framework.'
Shankar also pushed back on the perception that India's subscription market is limited. 'We've already blown past the idea that this is a 15–20 million subscriber market. It's not. It can be 300 million and beyond.'
As streaming becomes ubiquitous and scale is no longer the barrier, Shankar said the real gap is in imagination. 'You can't just think of yourself as a media company anymore. That definition is outdated. If we innovate on product, content, and monetisation, there's no reason an Indian media company can't be valued globally like Netflix or Tencent.'
First Published: 3 May 2025, 03:59 PM IST