MAM
Colvyn Harris to be conferred with AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award 2022
Mumbai: The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) has announced that the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award for 2022 will be conferred on advertising veteran Colvyn Harris. This is the highest honour to be given to an individual in India for his/ her outstanding contribution to the advertising industry.
Harris has had a long and successful career in the Indian advertising industry spanning over 40 years. His career was built in one company – JWT (now Wunderman Thompson), a WPP Group company, across varied roles, across India and JWT Sri Lanka where he was managing director. He began his career at Hindustan Thompson Associates (HTA), and went on to assume the role of CEO at Contract (now Contract Advertising), and then was designated JWT South Asia CEO.
During his tenure he built the most formidable full-service agency, most admired for its creativity, scale and reputation. He has worked on India’s most admired brands, notably Hero, GSK- Horlicks, Boost, Citibank, Ford, Airtel, Nestlé. He ended his career as executive director global growth & client development at JWT. He was also managing director marketing at L. Catterton Singapore, a global private equity company, part of LVMH, where his role was to help their investee companies working with the CEOs and chief marketing officers for achieving their growth and branding objectives globally.
Harris took a lot of interest in Industry matters. He was a jury member at the Cannes Lions in 2015, in the Effectiveness Category. He was also president of the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) in 2010 and chairman of the Goafest in 2009 and 2010. During his chairmanship, Goafest grew much faster and was recognized as the largest festival in India for celebration of creativity.
Harris has been a speaker at London Business School, at the Wharton India Economic Summit, Spikes Asia 2010 and chairman of numerous forums, including a speaker at the World Economic Forum India. He was a WPP nominee to the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Development Council for four years. Under his leadership, JWT won several Global Awards, numerous Cannes Lions, including India’s First Grand Prix while he was CEO.
Making the announcement, AAAI president Anupriya Acharya said, “Harris is in every sense a true pioneer and visionary. Apart from singlehandedly making JWT a top agency, he has also contributed significantly to the industry in various capacities, including as president of AAAI. He’s been a key driver and pivotal force in establishing Goafest as the largest advertising festival in India. I am pleased to say that the entire committee was unanimous in selecting Harris as this year’s AAAI’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner. He is truly deserving of this honour.”
For the record, the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award is presented annually to an individual who has been a practitioner of advertising for twenty-five years and had been in the top management position; has been or continues to be an active participant in industry bodies and or made significant contributions in shaping the industry priorities which enabled the advertising industry to grow, prosper and become more professionalized; individual known for his integrity, ethical practice and leadership qualities; contributed to his company/companies growth by innovative thinking and taking them in newer directions; involved in projects of social consequence which is seen as a role model for the industry at large and had been an industry veteran.
Some of the past winners of this award include Subhas Ghosal, Alyque Padamsee, Mike Khanna, R K Swamy, Piyush Pandey, Sam Balsara, Prem Mehta, Roda Mehta, Ram Sehgal, Madhukar Kamath, Arvind Sharma and others.
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.
