MAM
Ten Sports ties up with Maruti Suzuki for cricket ratings
MUMBAI: Ten Sports has announced that Maruti Suzuki will sponsor their cricket rating property. It will be called the Maruti Suzuki Cricket Ratings.
The two-year deal breaks on the channel from the first match of the Indian Oil Cup today with India taking on Sri Lanka in a day-night encounter at Dambulla.
Taj Television VP programming Peter Hutton said, “The concept behind the Maruti Suzuki Cricket Ratings is to come up with a cricket ranking system of the highest caliber. We wanted to create something that will allow viewers to identify with the methodology and at the same time create interesting television.
“We use an in house system which is capable of calculating and updating the players and teams rankings taking into consideration a number of aspects such as quality of competition, venue etc. We have also consciously made it visually exciting and have intentionally stayed away from excessive technicalities.”
Maruti Suzuki GM marketing Mayank Pareek says, “We are thrilled to be associated with the cricket rating property on Ten Sports. With their exciting line-up of India cricket over the next couple of years including the India tour of Pakistan and India tour of West Indies in 2006, I am confident that we will derive tremendous mileage from this property.”
Maruti Suzuki media manager Shaswati Saradar said “We believe that a property with such great saliency and frequency will keep us on top of the mind with our consumers. The top quality analysis of the performance of various teams and individual players will help us build a connect with the viewer as cricket is a passion in this country. We are sure that in months to come the words Cricket ratings” will be synonymous to Maruti Suzuki Cricket Ratings”.
Taj Television India ad sales VP Rukin Kizilbash said, ” We are delighted to have a partner like Maruti Suzuki for our premier property. We believe that the partnership will only get bigger and better in years to come. With our superlative live cricket content coming up I believe they will get tremendous value in associating with us on this property.”
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.
