MAM
‘Blow The Whistle’ for road safety campaign
MUMBAI: SABMiller India’s ‘Respect the Road’- Don’t drink and drive campaign, launched ‘Blow The Whistle’ initiative on digital media to promote the message of responsible drinking and overall road safety.
As a part of this initiative, people would be given whistles to blow against all kinds of road and traffic offenders e.g. signal jumpers, rash drivers, people indulging in drinking and driving etc.
Respect the Road is India’s biggest Don’t drink and drive campaign on digital platform. Going beyond highlight the perils of drunk driving, the Facebook page of the campaign will now also highlight dangerous and risky road behavior leading to road accidents and fatalities.
SABMiller India VP sustainability and communications Meenakshi Sharma said: “Promoting responsible drinking is one of the core sustainable priorities for SABMiller worldwide. Through ‘Respect the Road’- Don’t drink and drive campaign, we promote responsible drinking encouraging people to use alternatives to drinking and driving such as calling a cab, hiring a chauffeur or designating a buddy to drive. Blow The Whistle initiative is an extension of our campaign and goes a step further to involve people giving them the responsibility to take action and spread the word about road safety. We are confident that people will step out of their comfort zones and blow the whistle against road offenders.”
The page will showcase whistle creatives and images of people blowing whistles at traffic offenders. The objective is to involve people and encourage them to participate in this campaign to address the issue of road safety. People can post pictures of road offenders, share their experiences and testimonials of blowing whistles at offenders and send in pictures and videos of what/who would they blow the whistle against. The campaign would also urge people to help the victims in a road mishap and respond when they hear a whistle on the street.
Geek Creative CEO Mayank Agarwal said: “Blow The Whistle was conceptualized as an initiative to involve people on ground and encourage them to take up the issue of road safety. Through social media, we will engage with people through pictorial representations, participation through quizzes, contests and encourage people to use a whistle against traffic and road offenders. Our strategy involves a 360 degree integration of the top digital platforms to connect with our audience and spread awareness about road safety.”
The campaign will be taken on ground during the festive season this year where people can come and share their thoughts on making the roads safer. Whistles will be distributed to people for them to blow it against the road offenders and rule breakers. Other engaging activities like quizzes, street plays will be organised to create awareness about the campaign and the issue of road safety.
The campaign has staged interactive street plays on responsible drinking, tied up with radio station urging listeners to pledge for responsible drinking and associated with cab services to spread the message of responsible drinking and road safety.
The Facebook page of the campaign (https://www.facebook.com/respecttheroad) is highly interactive with more than 30,000 followers. Recently a safety shayari contest was organised where twitteratis tweeted Road Safety slogans in form of Shayari along with the hashtag # Blow the Whistle. Within hours both Blow the Whistle and Safety Shayari hashtags # were trending all over India and the campaign reached to over one lakh people.
SABMiller India’s ‘Respect the Road’- Don’t drink and drive campaign has partnered with Home Safe, Delhi NCR’s first chauffeur service, popular radio taxi providers Mega Cabs and radio station Radio City 91.1 FM.
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.
