MAM
Yahoo! India ropes in Malaika Arora to woo new users
MUMBAI: : Yahoo! India, has signed Malaika Arora Khan, the Bollywood actor for the ‘Yahoo! India mail’ campaign being launched online, in business and in-flight magazines besides outdoor at major domestic airport terminals.
Simultaneously, the company has also announced the ‘Malaika Arora Signature Series’ for Yahoo! India Mobile for users of the shortcode 8243.
Malaika will feature in the series of new Yahoo! India Mail’s print campaign that aims at highlighting the improved services on Y! India Mail. A Yahoo! India Mail user will enjoy a bigger storage space,
e -mail alerts on their mobile, receive and attach bigger files, gets benefited from enhanced security through improved spam control, besides having a unique feature of ‘address guard’ which allows the user to, create additional aliases to the primary e-mail account.
“Yahoo! India Mail has always endeavored to provide the Indian users of www.yahoo.co. in with continued innovations and product enhancements. Yahoo! Mail is a global leader and No 1 provider of E mail service both on the desktop and on the mobile. Yahoo! India will continue to provide better features of its flagship product to Indian users. E mail is still the single largest activity amongst Indians on the Internet .Trusted , safe and reliable Y! India Mail plans to acquire more e-mail users and provide them a platform to communicate and connect”, said Country General Manager Yahoo! India Neville Taraporewalla.
Yahoo! India will be launching the ‘Malaika Arora Signature Series’ on Yahoo! Mobile 8243. The Signature series will feature exclusive and unique mobile content like a ‘Get to know ‘ Malaika section of past pictures of the actor, Malaika’s favourite ringtones, video clips, themes in the form of screen savers, picture messages and logos and besides exciting Malaika mobile games and other features which will definitely enthrall all Malaika fans. All this available on the Yahoo! India wap site at http://in.wap.yahoo.com.
Not only this, for the first time, Yahoo! India will also offer an exclusive Malaika voice based content to all voice service users which will include celeb artist of the month, prompts, including personalized greetings, true tones, and Malaika caller tunes.
Apart from that, Yahoo! India Mobile fans will also get a chance to win a dinner date with Malaika by taking part in the various Malaika contests on Yahoo! India planned throughout the year.
Announcing the Malaika Signature series, Yahoo! India Mobile head Vishal Maheshwari said, “Mobile users are increasingly looking for value added content and Yahoo! India has always endeavoured to help people get more out of their mobile phones. The Malaika Signature Series initiative on Yahoo! Mobile 8243 is an example of how we are trying to increase our mass appeal by signing on with a name which the whole of India and specially the youth identifies with.”
The Malaika Signature Series on Yahoo! Mobile 8243 will be available across the country, through Yahoo! India Mobile’s tie-ups with all leading cellular operators in the country.
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.
