MAM
Isobar names Maciek Nowicki as chief creative officer for South East Asia & India
MUMBAI: Isobar has promoted Maciek Nowicki to chief creative officer of Isobar South East Asia & India, a newly created role, overseeing 13 Isobar locations across nine countries.
Nowicki will relocate from Isobar Poland and will report to Isobar APAC MD Sven Huberts.
Nowicki will be responsible for enhancing and integrating the creative teams, increasing the agency creative output and acting as the creative lead on multi-market pitches. Bolstering the creative leadership line-up is a critical step in strengthening Isobar’s Brand Commerce offering and driving the business forward across the region. Nowicki also joins Isobar’s Global Creative Excellence Council, chaired by Isobar EMEA chief creative officer Nick Bailey.
Huberts said, “Maciek is one of those people who has the dexterity, stamina and drive to create a high performance creative culture. He understands how brands are currently being built for todays convergent world. Everyone is really excited to work closely with Maciek to help deliver borderless, game changing ideas that help solve our clients business challenges.”
Nowicki added, “I love the vast and amazingly multi-layered Asian culture and people, so I am doubly excited to get started in this new role. We have some great talent in Isobar in Asia and I look forward to working alongside them to produce work that makes a difference.”
Prior to his promotion, Nowicki was managing creative director for the 300+ strong team at Isobar Poland, looking after brands including P&G, GM, Disney and Arla Foods. In addition, he oversaw the creative output across multiple Dentsu Aegis Network agencies in Poland.
During his tenure, Isobar Poland entered the elite club of the best integrated agencies in the country, winning over 60 major international, regional and domestic awards and merits.
Yuri Drabent has been promoted to Isobar Poland creative director.
Nowicki was previously a creative director in Procter & Gamble Poland, and prior to that he worked for Grey Group, JWT, Havas, McCann and spent a year in Moscow, working as Creative Director for FCB.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
