MAM
Amit Srivastava joins India Chambers to spearhead rural nutraceutical revolution
MUMBAI: India Chambers has named Nutrify Today CEO Amit Srivastava to the governing board of its Rural Economic Forum, marking a strategic move to turbocharge the One India Project’s rural innovation engine.
The appointment, announced on 12 June, places Srivastava at the heart of India’s effort to revolutionise its agrarian economy through technology, sustainable practices, and data-driven decision-making. The forum, helmed by India Chambers president & CEO Nitin Pangotra, is set to unleash economic opportunities across the country’s rural heartland.
Srivastava enters the role with a proven playbook. His work at Nutrify Today—particularly the development of NutrifyGenie AI—has drawn international acclaim. The AI platform, designed for precision in nutraceutical supply chains, now powers research recognised by leading academic publishers such as Elsevier.
“These homegrown innovations demonstrate India’s emergence as a global nutraceutical science hub”, said Pangotra. “Amit’s dedication to responsible nutritional science and his success in democratising supply chains make him the ideal leader to help us scale this $3 trillion rural food-tech and nutraceutical ecosystem”.
Srivastava’s mandate includes deploying AI-driven traceability tools for crop sourcing, mobilising smallholder farmers for high-value organic cultivation, and collaborating with institutions like IIT Kanpur and ICMR to develop a national nutritional security infrastructure. He will also help scale GauVan, a carbon sequestration initiative blending sustainable livelihoods with climate resilience.
India’s nutraceutical sector has grown tenfold in a decade, ballooning from $2 billion in 2015 to $20 billion in 2025, at a CAGR of 13.5 per cent. Srivastava believes the journey is just beginning. “A purpose-driven startup culture has taught us that when the purpose is clear, the path emerges”, he said. “I’m honoured to collaborate with India Chambers, our research partners, and thousands of rural entrepreneurs to accelerate India’s $100 billion nutraceutical mission”.
Pangotra likened India’s trajectory to the U.S. nutraceutical boom of the early 2000s, stating that India’s pharma legacy and rising biotech clusters now offer it a chance to lead, not follow.
As Srivastava takes the reins, the Rural Economic Forum aims to transform individual farmers into agri-preneurs and local supply chains into scalable, transparent ecosystems. With the nutraceutical gold rush now underway, India is betting on brains, biotech, and Bharat to lead the way.
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.
