'Just the fact that the biggest language at the box office was Telugu and not Hindi is startling.'
Netflix is reminiscent of Star TV in the 1990s: Very Western in its gaze, very expensive, and clueless, notes Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
'This kind of love from our audience shows that our music is working.'
As of December 2021, Netflix India stood at an estimated 5 million subscribers against 46 million for Disney+Hotstar and 19 million for Amazon Prime Video.
For years it has been evident that fibre and DTH would give tough competition to cable in India where regulatory overload has mutilated an already warped industry structure. OTT added fuel to the fire. From Rs 27,000 crore in 2010, cable's share of subscription revenues is now estimated at Rs 13,000 crore.
Puneet Goenka's ability to stay calm is probably what helped Zee rise from a down-in-the-dumps broadcaster into one of the largest, steadiest and most profitable media companies in India, reports Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad account for 33% of the total active paid subscriptions.
The chairman of the Essel Group says he has settled 91.2 per cent of the estimated Rs 11,000 crore debt on the group's books.
'This is a blip in the 100-year history of cinema.'
'I was born a lower middle-class person, am one today and will die as one,' Billboard's International Power Player Devraj Sanyal tells Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
From Rs 191 billion in 2019, the world's largest film producing industry now stands at Rs 72 billion thanks to the pandemic.
Monetising online readership, a deeper focus on content and getting revenue from the reader are ways to make the business future-proof, observes Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
Even if it wants to censor what you read, watch, or consume, the amount of content online is so huge that it is physically impossible for any government to do it, notes Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
From convincing film-makers to do shows for online, to having a slate with some of the best films and shows, Amazon Prime Video has come a long way since it came to India four years ago.
India's news broadcasters are a national shame that have polarised Indians, observes Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
About 18 months after its entry in India, a Spotify listener spent an average of 97 minutes on the app, almost ten times more than any other streaming music brand.
It is the most potent symbol of India's soft power -- more perhaps than the IT industry and our managerial skill, notes Vanita Kohli-Khandekar
Uday Shankar's biggest contribution was that he managed to take years of resentment about Star's foreign origins and turn that around. Most people now think of Star as an Indian company, says Vanita Kohli-Khandekar of his stint at Star india.
Since its entry in 2016, Netflix has announced over 60 titles to be sourced from India.
The argument that the pandemic has given a boost to streaming video is fallacious. Only three OTTs saw a rise in viewership; the others fell.