MAM
Beauty & Lifestyle Virtual Roundtable: It is the best time for Indian customers
NEW DELHI: While the onset of the great Indian festive season with Onam might not have been the exact point of revival for the beauty and lifestyle industry, as many of the players were expecting it to be, it surely has set the ball rolling into a more positive direction, concluded the eminent panelists on Indiantelevision.com’s Beauty and Lifestyle Virtual Roundtable, hosted and moderated by our founder CEO & editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari.
Present on the panel were VLCC Health Care Ltd chief business officer Ameet Kkatyal, Baggit head of marketing Atul Rohan Garg, Lotus Herbals Pvt Ltd head of innovation, development, and brand strategy Ispita Chatterjee, Myntra head of marketing Harish Narayanan, Max Fashion India SVP marketing Jiten Mahendra, Future Group India CMO-FBB Prachi Mohapatra, and mCaffeine director and co-founder Vikas Lachhwani.
Mohapatra noted that though the numbers are not completely black or white, meaning the spending was neither great nor completely muted. “It wasn’t a complete washout for us. In fact, 2018-19 were bigger washouts than this year, because of the floods. In 2020, I was looking at a far more muted response, sentiment-wise as well as number-wise, but the response has surprised us. We hadn’t set our numbers at a very optimistic level but the growth has been far more than what we had expected.”
The panel is now looking at the response as a better prelude for the months to come, expecting that the industry will start picking up from the second week of September and will continue to do so throughout the festive season. They all looked very positive about the fact that they are well prepared for it.
Lachhwani shared that luckily they were on the right side of the business during the pandemic and did not face as much loss as compared to other contemporaries. He added, “We spent these 4-5 months to think ahead and spend a lot of time on R&D. We are not itching to come out stronger than ever with new launches.”
Narayanan agrees with Lachhwani. He said that Myntra team too has spent a great deal of time on research and development and also launched interesting innovations via properties like Myntra Studio where they are trying to catch the customers. Going ahead, his focus will be to keep strengthening the company’s goodwill with not just the consumers but also brand partners and is looking at constant innovation to support that.
Mahendra elaborated that this time has helped them greatly in identifying their loyal consumers and create segmentations accordingly. “About 80-90 per cent of our revenues are coming from our loyalty base and we are doing a lot of work on segmentation.”
He added that the focus is on finding out which alternate channels that got relevant during these months will stay relevant post-Covid2019 and is working towards building their strengths on them. “Be it WhatsApp, vernacular content, or video calls, we are looking at all the possible channels that will help us. There is a lot of pent-up demand, I am sure and we will have to build our brand behaviour around customer surroundings.”
Chatterjee noted that being a resilient brand, they innovated a lot during the pandemic. “The first challenge that we faced was that our UG is very aspirational and with the whole sentiment being very negative, it was important for us to reach out to them. So, we invested a lot in influencer activities, especially micro and nano influencers. We also resorted to cold calling, which worked really well for us.”
She added that their tech and innovations team is working really hard to introduce concepts of AI, VR, etc. to make the space more inclusive and positive towards catering to the post-pandemic fears of the people.
Kkatyal insisted that the industry collectively should be working towards educating the consumers and make them believe that it is safe to go out and shop. “Consumer is scared to step out and needs a lot of hand-holding. We have to prove to them that our outlets are as safe as their homes. We have to break the ice.”
He suggested that it is imperative that the industry collectively runs positive campaigns and inspire customers.
Further, Wanvari raised an interesting question pertaining to the rise of many new local and small-scale brands during the lockdown and if the established players are seeing them as a threat.
To this, Kkatyal replied that out of a hundred brands that rose during the pandemic, only 10 per cent would have made a mark and only one per cent of them would stay. So, he is not threatened by the competition.
He also hinted that the industry might see a lot of brands evaporating or shrinking, or even looking for consolidations in the post-pandemic era and that can be a big opportunity for some of the established companies.
Narayanan noted that it is the best time for Indian consumers as more competition will translate into more innovation.
The panel looked quite hopeful about the future but maintained the coming two-three years are going to be the true litmus test for them. However, they are well-prepared to surf the tough tide.
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.
