MAM
Ad Club Bangalore snaps up Gen Z insights at Inspiration Room
MUMBAI: When it comes to decoding Gen Z, even advertising veterans know they can’t just swipe left on change. The Advertising Club Bangalore’s 15th Inspiration Room lit up last Wednesday with over 100 participants, all keen to grasp how the next generation is reshaping consumption and culture.
The evening kicked off with Gauri Kumar, who dived straight into the world of Augmented Reality (AR). From Bitmojis to AR lenses, she showed how brands like Myntra and Swiggy are already harnessing Snapchat’s creative toolkit to create scroll-stopping campaigns. “The challenge for brands is no longer access to AR, it’s how creatively you use it,” she quipped, adding that Snapchat has democratised AR production. A live demo on building AR experiences gave attendees a tangible taste of the future of branded engagement.
Next up Snap Inc. India head of growth Chirag Kohli unpacked how Gen Z, who already command 43 per cent of consumer spend (a figure tipped to hit 50 per cent in the next decade), are redefining commerce. For them, shopping is not just transactional, it’s “shopcialising”, where trends, visuals, and community matter more than price tags. Kohli revealed that 63 per cent of Snapchat users have made purchases on the platform, proving its dual role as both a connection hub and a commerce driver.
With creators becoming the new search engines and Snapchat pushing India-first features with a camera-first design, the session painted a vivid picture of how phygital is no longer a buzzword but a behaviour. “Attention is scarce, impressions are abundant,” Kohli warned, urging brands to deliver joy and community to cut through the noise.
Closing the evening Ad Club Bangalore president Laeeq Ali announced that the Club itself is making its Snapchat debut. “This edition has set the bar high for what’s to come,” he said, noting how AR’s blend of code, 3D graphics, and storytelling is redefining advertising playbooks.
For a series built on sparking inspiration, this edition proved why the Inspiration Room remains the place where marketers, creators, and technologists come together to catch the next big wave before it even trends.
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.
