MAM
“Digital marketers need to lean into multi-format”: YouTube India head of consumer marketing Mansha Tandon
Mumbai: At The Advertising Club’s third edition of D:CODE, YouTube India head of consumer marketing Mansha Tandon spoke about shaping creativity with culture and trends in the digital space. She added that leaning into multi-format is important, while offering tips and tricks for digital marketers. She mentioned, “Trends are born from creativity that is no longer restricted to one digital video format.”
Tandon said that years ago, success on YouTube was about a viral video like ‘Charlie Bit My Finger.’ The video represented a monolithic pop culture moment, a one-to-many phenomenon. The video gained immense views in a very short period of time.
Today, digital trends are continuous, interconnected, and cumulative. The latest trend, ‘Choti Bacchi Ho Kya,’ from the movie “Heropanti,” released back in 2014 starring Tiger Shroff, is now popular due to a mimicry artist on the platform. It became a remix song. It became a gaming video on YouTube Shorts. It became a promotional video for “Heropanti 2.”
The monolithic pop culture has become personally relevant fragmented moments based on the user’s tastes and preferences. It is not about one viral video at present. It is about how those viral videos go into different formats.
The second tip she shared is that digital marketers should capitalise on community creativity. Communities are groups of people united by the same interests and passions. What YouTube is seeing today is that one of the most powerful forms of this community is fandom. For instance, K-pop. Then there has been an increase in professional Marvel fans in India. The way they create content is through short-form videos, episode breakdowns, and deep dive podcasts. The fact is that it is not niche. Many of these channels have millions of subscribers. The lesson is that marketers should not only demographically and psychographically do digital campaigns. They should tap into the shared passions and sources of fandom of very young consumers.
Her third and final point was that marketers should truly represent regional creativity in their digital work. Marketers should not underestimate the kind of creativity going on in areas across the country. Localising creativity in the language and culture is important. But there are other interesting ways in which this is happening. International trends with regional nuance are being followed. Apart from hyperlocal, global into local, there is something being seen that she called interlocal. It is about pan-India content. So something from the North finds a huge fan following in the South. When trends go national, regional creators find the inspiration to create magic. She gave the example of the Badshah’s Jugnu Challenge, seen last year. It spawned many versions across the country. An absolute evolution in entertainment and creativity is being seen.
She further noted that without entrepreneurs, creators, and users, digital would not be where it is today. She gave the example of Olympic gold medallist Neeraj Chopra, who was on-boarded as a creator on YouTube. It was not enough to just make a film about his story. The aim was to connect the dots. Now he has 1,00,000 subscribers. A short challenge, ‘JavRun,’ was done for GenZ users. It was so successful that a question on the ‘JavRun’ challenge made it to KBC. This is an example of a digital campaign seeping through pop culture and bleeding into offline touchpoints.
She also spoke about Nike. It was about NFT sneakers and other stuff that makes young people excited. She also gave an example of Alexa, which is Amazon’s voice assistance software. Alexa was inserted into a YouTube talk show among humans. It showed the human and conversational side of Alexa. It is a strong example of how brands and creators can collaborate.
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.
