MAM
Shemaroo’s Jai Maroo on bridging generation gap, transformation journey and growth plans
MUMBAI: If reinvention is the key skill for surviving any business, 56-year-old company Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd (Shemaroo) has exemplified this art. The company, which embarked on a five-year transformation journey with an aim of 5x growth, reoriented existing talent and brought in people from diverse sectors to scale up the functioning.
At the recently concluded Indiantelevision.com’s first edition of Media HR Summit, Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd (http://www.indiantelevision.com/iworld/over-the-top-services/shemaroo-entertainment-starts-ott-journey-banking-on-its-popular-titles-190214) director Jai Maroo spoke on the various aspects of the transformation journey in a freewheeling fireside chat with Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO and editor-in-chief Anil Wanvari.
One of the biggest challenges the industry is facing today is accommodating five different generations in the same company but Maroo seems confident. While building the first transformation more than a decade ago, the company has bridged the gap of bringing in the talent that is needed without disrespecting the talent that is there. He also added that leadership and HR have to play a key role in bringing that balance.
Maroo mentioned that the company has been reinventing itself to stay relevant in the changing times. That has been the biggest transformation. He pointed out that Shemaroo is media-agnostic serving just about every screen of consumption that exists.
The company founders made transformation a priority in the early decades of the company. “The ability to not look at where you have been but where your consumption is going and follow that, that ability and humility is something our founders practised for the last three decades but for the last two decades the founders have given a lot of leeways to the team and make the entire organisation do it,” he commented.
The second transformation of the company was scaling the business including getting listed, changing the nature of deals, own capital allocations. “The third transformation which is to say is that we saw an opportunity more than five years ago for this boom that was coming. Everyone saw the boom was about to come, the disruption that was happening. But it was impossible to time the market that’s why we chose to scale incrementally,” Maroo added.
He contended that the transformation is not just about outlining strategy and getting content and customer right. It’s also about getting talent, marrying it with the talent the company has, in terms of changing the way business and processes. It is also important to spend enough time supporting all of the various entrepreneurs within the company. Maroo added that attrition has not risen substantially despite Shemaroo having undergone this huge transformation journey.
From the key learning from two decades, he outlined some key winning traits. Maroo emphasised on putting the other person first and added that relationships with people including employees, customers and vendors hold an important place. Another important point he added was the ability to map and extract value from the ecosystem by seeing where someone is in the value chain. The focus should be on value that accrues in the future. He also pointed out the importance of unwillingness to compromise any commitment.
“Our current growth is very healthy. We are doing slightly better than the industry. We are growing at 18-19 per cent CAGR while the industry is at 12-13 per cent CAGR. Digital is growing at a much better rate of 40-45 per cent CAGR. And if we continue to grow at that rate, in five years we will be double our size but we want to grow 5x in five years; that was the mission,” Maroo added.
“We have set certain milestones for the journey; both in terms of business plans and building teams and developing their journeys as well. Like everything else in life, some of it is on the mark, some ahead of time and some behind. That last one is my focus at present,” he commented. Moreover, the company recently started piloting a very interesting product, a device which is a Bluetooth speaker with devotional content pre-loaded.
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.
