VFX fastest growing segment, Indian OTT content going global: FICCI-EY Report

Indian animation and visual effects industry is now a back office of the world, making it the fastest growing sector this year with a growth around 57 per cent, according to FICCI-EY Report on Media and Entertainment released here Monday.

The rise of the VFX segment further signals to its double growth by 2024 which is projected to be around Rs 18000 crores by 2024, the report stated.

”The studios in India that serve the sector are numbered around 954, with 139 training universities which produce around 185000 hours of artists. The number of trained artists are expected to increase to around 1 mn in the next three-four years.” On the finished content side, ‘The Great Indian Content Factory’ is gaining audiences around the world.

As per the report, India produced around 156000 hours of television content last year, 2500 hours of OTT content, and 2000 hours of film content in spite of the lockdown. This is bound to grow with the 2500 hours of OTT expected to reach around 4500 hours by 2026.

Not just that, this content is also amassing global accolades.

Twenty per cent of the Amazon Prime Indian Originals viewership comes from outside India, wheares 11 of Netflix India Originals featured in the Top 10 list of 10 or more countries. Indian content on OTT has received 10 plus awards, according to the FICCI-EY Report. On the whole, the times are bright for the Indian Media and Entertainment (M&E) sector as the industry in 2022 has grown by around 16.4 per cent to reach Rs 1.61 trillion.

After a degrowth of 24 per cent in the year 2020, the M&E sector is now just 11 per cent short of reaching the pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

On the gaming side, India is one of the biggest gaming markets globally as well as fastest growing.

India has around 390 million gamers and it’s growing rapidly.

As per the report, it is expected that the Media and Entertainment industry will grow by 17 per cent in 2022 to reach Rs 1.89 trillion in 2022.

By 2024, the industry is expected to reach around Rs 2.32 trillion, with an expected 13.1 per cent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR).

For the past two years, the GDP growth was exceeding the advertising growth. This year, for the first time, after two years, the advertising growth is 25.4 per cent. And the overall industry has grown at 16.4 per cent. The industry grew at a lower level than advertising because events and promotions of films during the pandemic took place at a reduced scale, the report stated.

In absolute terms, the digital media grew around Rs 68 bn and established itself as the second largest segment, after VFX, in media and entertainment industry.

The overall industry grew at around 16 per cent and, TV and radio were the only ones below 16 per cent.

India now has about 790 million of internet connections, out of which 25 million are wired broadband and 771 million are mobile broadbands.

This is leading to the increase in connectivity, which is now around 10 million, and it is expected to reach around 40 million. The mobile broadband connections are leading to around 5 million smartphones and they have around 467 online news and entertainment reach.

There is going to be 1.4 million Indian consumers and 1 billion smartphones, the report said.

Even while the top of the pyramid is growing in terms of the OTTs subscriptions and connected TVs, free TV households have also increased to around 43 million.

In 2021, only 12 million subscribers, out of the total 890 million, got the cable connection disconnected. About 300 million people consumed content through the telecom and the cable subscription.

In the esports segment, the country will have 1 million players by 2022 and about 100 brands supporting them.

Large amount of the income of those industry, about 70 per cent, is still coming from online fantasy gaming and the real money gaming.

This year digital advertising increased by around 29 per cent. The ‘Search and Social’, which is Google and Facebook, cornered around 69 per cent.

e-commerce like Amazon and Flipkart, where people are shopping a lot, are getting aggressive with digital advertisements, with the statistics standing at 16 per cent. The report was launched at India Pavilion as part of the EXPO2020 Dubai in the presence of Apurva Chandra, Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India; actor R Madhavan; Jyoti Deshpande, CEO, Viacom18 & co-chair, FICCI M&E; Sunjay Sudhir, Indian Ambassador, UAE; Aravind Singh, Secretary, Tourism, Government of India; producer Bobby Bedi, and Vikram Sahay, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. PTI