MAM
Tata Motors ups mass media communications spends
BENGALURU: Along with fresh expenses towards mass media communications for eight new variants launched within a week, Indian automobile major Tata Motors has planned for larger ad spends this fiscal revealed Tata Motors Passenger Vehicle Business Unit president Ranjit Yadav to Indiantelevision.com. The increased spends include brand building of the mother brand as well as the various passenger vehicle models and variants from the Tata Motors stable.
“The Tata Group companies always vie for the podium – to be among the top three in any business,” said Yadav who was in Bengaluru to celebrate the success of two ‘Tata Nano expeditions‘. – A team set a Guinness World Record by accomplishing the longest journey of 10,218 kms, in a Tata Nano, in 10 days, breaking the current record of 8046.74 kms and a 78 day all India drive in a Nano across 26,500 kms by a 62 year old Thomas Chacko who has penned his journey‘s experiences in a book ‘Atop the world‘. A new TVC was also showcased at the event.
Digital communications play a big role in Tata Motors communications plans – “With 40 to 50 per cent of car buyers checking out specs and details about cars, digital is very important for us,” informed Yadav. It is on the conventional social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter among others.
Three agencies handle the creative work for various models of Tata Motors – Rediffusion, O&M and FCB Ulka. Media buying for old media is Lodestar. For digital media, the company has a number of agencies informed Yadav.
In a bad market scenario, Tata Motors, which has a 12 per cent market share of the passenger car industry in India, is looking to grow market share to 14.5 per cent. Tata Motors too has seen a decline in its statistics when compared to last year. If the industry numbers shrink further, Tata Motors may achieve that growth even if its own numbers remain flat or shrink at a rate that is less than decline in the industry‘s figures.
The automobile sector in India has certainly seen better days and is in for tough times. Numbers have taken a dive over the past seven months and industry sources are skeptical about even the low growth figures indicated by Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) is the apex Industry body representing 46 leading vehicle and vehicular engine manufacturers in India.
Some percentage of parts of all cars made in India is imported. The continued downward slide of the rupee vis-?-vis the US dollar has added to its woes, with the cost of imported components becoming dearer in Indian rupees.
MAM
AI could unlock billions for India’s $30 billion media industry, says JioStar vice-chairman Uday Shankar
JioStar vice-chairman urges industry to seize once-in-a-generation AI moment to turn India into the world’s creative capital
DELHI: India’s media industry stands at a historic inflection point. Artificial intelligence, long discussed as a technological disruptor, could now become the lever that propels the country from a domestic content giant to a global creative powerhouse.
Delivering the keynote at the IndiaAI Impact Summit, Uday Shankar argued that AI offers India a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead, not follow, in global media and entertainment.
Shankar credited the prime minister’s vision for centring India’s growth agenda around AI and described the summit as overdue . Drawing on three decades in media, he traced the industry’s transformation from the arrival of the first newsroom computers to the launch of India’s earliest digital platforms, each wave of technology reshaping speed, scale and audience engagement.
The numbers tell a story of staggering growth. In just 25 years, India’s media and entertainment sector has expanded from a few billion dollars to become the world’s fifth-largest market, contributing more than $30bn to the economy. Television households have jumped from about 70m to over 210m, with more than 800m video consumers today.
Yet global influence remains elusive. While South Korea exported Squid Game and Parasite to worldwide acclaim, and Puerto Rico produced the most-streamed artist on the planet, India has struggled to consistently break through beyond its domestic and diaspora audiences .
The constraints are structural. Hollywood studio productions command budgets of $65m to $100m, with tentpoles running as high as $300m. The average Indian film operates on $3m to $5m . A marquee US television episode can cost $20m to $30m; an Indian serial is typically produced for Rs 7 lakh to Rs 10 lakh per episode, roughly $10,000. The capital gap, Shankar argued, has narrowed ambition and limited global competitiveness.
AI, he said, changes the equation by rewiring the three pillars of the industry: content, consumer and commerce.
On content, AI-powered production is collapsing infrastructure costs and accelerating timelines. At JioStar, the company recently produced Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, a 100-episode live-action series delivered three to five times faster than a traditional production pipeline. The implication is stark. The remaining constraint is no longer capital, but imagination.
On consumers, AI enables conversational discovery, interactive storytelling and regionalisation that goes beyond simple dubbing to reflect India’s linguistic texture. On commerce, it unlocks granular segmentation and dynamic pricing, moving beyond the blunt instruments of subscription and advertising that have defined the industry for a century.
The prize is vast. The global media market, currently worth nearly $3trn, is projected to reach $3.5trn by 2029. India’s share remains under 2 per cent. Even a shift to 5 per cent would generate tens of billions of dollars in additional value.
But Shankar cautioned that opportunity does not guarantee outcome. He called for three commitments: self-disruption before external disruption, aggressive skilling to create AI-native creative hybrids, and policy frameworks that accelerate rather than constrain innovation.
Hollywood’s defensive posture towards AI, he suggested, offers India a rare window to design the business models and regulatory frameworks that could set global precedents. The shift in advantage, he argued, favours nations with deep cultural reservoirs and massive audiences.
The question is no longer whether India can lead in the AI age of media, he concluded, but whether it will move fast enough to claim that position.
The stories were always here. Now the technology has caught up.
