Gaurav Banerjee opens Big Picture Summit with call for global creative ambition

MUMBAI: Lights, camera… recalibration! At the CII Big Picture Summit 2025 in Mumbai, Sony Pictures Networks India MD & CEO and CII National Council on Media & Entertainment chairman Gaurav Banerjee served up a stirring call for India’s creative economy to stop thinking local and start playing on the world stage.

Speaking at the JW Marriott Juhu, Banerjee said India’s Media & Entertainment sector stood at “a moment of profound transformation”, with talent, technology and cultural confidence finally aligning. The global industry is racing towards $3.5 trillion by 2030, and though India currently accounts for just 2 per cent of that value, he framed this not as a constraint but a “phenomenal headroom to grow”.

He argued that India’s long-standing comfort with its vast domestic market has, ironically, limited its global ambition. Drawing a sharp parallel with South Korea’s deliberate creation of the Hallyu wave, from K-dramas to Parasite and Squid Game, Banerjee asked why India shouldn’t aim for similar worldwide cultural impact.

He pointed to India’s creative hits already making waves, from chart-topping music to globally streamed series, and even cited Mahavtar Narasimha as an example of audiences welcoming bolder, fresher formats. “The real constraint isn’t the market,” he said. “It’s the ambition we place on ourselves.”

To unlock India’s next leap, Banerjee called for an “IPL of Creativity”: specialised creative institutions, stronger industry–academia partnerships, regional creative hubs, and rapid public–private collaboration—capacity-building engines that have powered global creative economies.

On the role of AI, he struck a reassuring note. Creativity, he insisted, would remain human at its core. “AI will not define creativity. Human imagination will.”

Wrapping up, Banerjee urged the industry to stop measuring success merely by domestic scale. “India must define success by global influence,” he concluded. “If we raise our ambition, build institutions, nurture creators and think boldly, not just about the India we are, but the India we can be, then India will not just grow. India will lead.”