MAM
Stovekraft hands over digital & creative duties to Team Pumpkin
Mumbai: The 360-degree marketing agency, Team Pumpkin, has won the digital and creative mandate for Stovekraft. With this new partnership, Team Pumpkin will be at the forefront of all the digital activities for Stovekraft’s brands Pigeon, Gilma, Skava, and Black+Decker.
The account was won following a multi-agency bid. Team Pumpkin will handle the account from its Mumbai office.
The agency will be in charge of developing and strengthening the brand’s digital presence by creating innovative social communication strategies through cutting-edge innovation, ideation, execution, and promotion.
Speaking on the collaboration, Team Pumpkin co-founder Swati Nathani said, “We are thrilled to have secured the digital and creative mandate for Stovekraft, India’s leading kitchen appliance brand, established on pioneering energy and innovative culture. It aligns perfectly with our goals and philosophy, making us a perfect match. As a leading agency in crafting and delivering digital innovations and solutions, our unique, cutting-edge digital offering based on brand vision will expand the brand love onto new-age digital platforms and generate significant customer experiences.”
Stovekraft managing director Rajendra Gandhi said, “As one of the pioneering companies in kitchen appliances, our constant endeavour is to provide the best range of products catering to the needs of every homemaker in the country. Stovekraft has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years, and we look forward to expanding our business more. Hence, digital has become an important aspect of expanding our business. It is impressive what Team Pumpkin has in mind for our brand. We are confident that Team Pumpkin’s expertise and nuanced understanding of digital media will help us achieve our vision.”
MAM
AI could unlock billions for India’s $30 billion media industry, says JioStar vice-chairman Uday Shankar
JioStar vice-chairman urges industry to seize once-in-a-generation AI moment to turn India into the world’s creative capital
DELHI: India’s media industry stands at a historic inflection point. Artificial intelligence, long discussed as a technological disruptor, could now become the lever that propels the country from a domestic content giant to a global creative powerhouse.
Delivering the keynote at the IndiaAI Impact Summit, Uday Shankar argued that AI offers India a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lead, not follow, in global media and entertainment.
Shankar credited the prime minister’s vision for centring India’s growth agenda around AI and described the summit as overdue . Drawing on three decades in media, he traced the industry’s transformation from the arrival of the first newsroom computers to the launch of India’s earliest digital platforms, each wave of technology reshaping speed, scale and audience engagement.
The numbers tell a story of staggering growth. In just 25 years, India’s media and entertainment sector has expanded from a few billion dollars to become the world’s fifth-largest market, contributing more than $30bn to the economy. Television households have jumped from about 70m to over 210m, with more than 800m video consumers today.
Yet global influence remains elusive. While South Korea exported Squid Game and Parasite to worldwide acclaim, and Puerto Rico produced the most-streamed artist on the planet, India has struggled to consistently break through beyond its domestic and diaspora audiences .
The constraints are structural. Hollywood studio productions command budgets of $65m to $100m, with tentpoles running as high as $300m. The average Indian film operates on $3m to $5m . A marquee US television episode can cost $20m to $30m; an Indian serial is typically produced for Rs 7 lakh to Rs 10 lakh per episode, roughly $10,000. The capital gap, Shankar argued, has narrowed ambition and limited global competitiveness.
AI, he said, changes the equation by rewiring the three pillars of the industry: content, consumer and commerce.
On content, AI-powered production is collapsing infrastructure costs and accelerating timelines. At JioStar, the company recently produced Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, a 100-episode live-action series delivered three to five times faster than a traditional production pipeline. The implication is stark. The remaining constraint is no longer capital, but imagination.
On consumers, AI enables conversational discovery, interactive storytelling and regionalisation that goes beyond simple dubbing to reflect India’s linguistic texture. On commerce, it unlocks granular segmentation and dynamic pricing, moving beyond the blunt instruments of subscription and advertising that have defined the industry for a century.
The prize is vast. The global media market, currently worth nearly $3trn, is projected to reach $3.5trn by 2029. India’s share remains under 2 per cent. Even a shift to 5 per cent would generate tens of billions of dollars in additional value.
But Shankar cautioned that opportunity does not guarantee outcome. He called for three commitments: self-disruption before external disruption, aggressive skilling to create AI-native creative hybrids, and policy frameworks that accelerate rather than constrain innovation.
Hollywood’s defensive posture towards AI, he suggested, offers India a rare window to design the business models and regulatory frameworks that could set global precedents. The shift in advantage, he argued, favours nations with deep cultural reservoirs and massive audiences.
The question is no longer whether India can lead in the AI age of media, he concluded, but whether it will move fast enough to claim that position.
The stories were always here. Now the technology has caught up.
