MAM
K. Anand Raman joins JioStar as vice president
DELHI: K. Anand Raman has traded one Star for another. After nearly 18 years at Disney Star, the media executive has joined JioStar as vice president, marking one of the more notable defections in India’s rapidly consolidating entertainment industry.
Raman’s career reads like a roadmap of Indian broadcasting’s evolution. He joined Star India in 2008 as a senior executive, back when the network was still finding its feet in regional markets. Over nearly two decades, he climbed the ranks, eventually becoming director in 2021 while simultaneously holding the title of assistant vice president since 2017, a dual role that saw him oversee operations across multiple channels.
His most recent stint involved running the Maa Network, a Telugu-language cluster acquired by Star in late 2015. Raman’s job was to stitch the acquisition into Star’s broader regional strategy, a task that involved integrating teams, maximising revenue and building what corporate types call “synergies”. Before that, he led sales for Star’s English infotainment and lifestyle portfolio, including National Geographic and Fox Life, and managed advertising for Star Movies.
The move to JioStar, which began in November 2025, places Raman in Hyderabad at a moment when India’s media giants are locked in a brutal battle for eyeballs and advertising rupees. JioStar, the result of a mega-merger between Reliance’s Viacom18 and Disney Star, represents one of the largest entertainment consolidations in Indian history. For Raman, it is both a homecoming of sorts, given his Star pedigree, and a bet on the next phase of India’s streaming and broadcast wars.
Before his long Star tenure, Raman cut his teeth at Radio City, India’s first private FM station, where he handled key accounts from 2006 to 2008. Earlier still, he worked at Chitralekha Group, managing advertising for a leading Gujarati magazine, and did a brief stint at Bennett Coleman’s Times Syndication Service during the launch of Times Books.
Twenty-two years in media, multiple channel launches, regional integrations and now a vice president’s chair at a freshly minted entertainment behemoth. Whether JioStar proves to be Raman’s biggest stage yet or just another chapter in India’s endless media melodrama remains to be seen. Either way, he knows the script by heart.
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.
