MAM
Goafest Creative Abby jury chairs announced for Integrated, OOH/Ambient, Branded Content and Public Relations
MUMBAI The Awards Governing Council of Goafest 2016 has declared the jury chairs for Integrated, OOH/Ambient, Branded Content and Public Relations. DDB Mudra chairman and CCO Sonal Dabral will chair the OOH/Ambient Jury of Creative Abby, J. Walter Thompson CCO Senthil Kumar will chair the integrated category. Reliance Broadcast Network CEO Tarunl Katial will be jury chair for the branded content category while Madison PR CEO Paresh Chaudhury will chair the Public Relations category.
Dabral has over two decades of experience in advertising industry and has curated many winning campaigns for major local, regional and multinational brands. He began his career in Lintas and after a brief stint in Mudra Delhi, went on to have an extremely successful stint at Ogilvy Mumbai. He then went on to head Ogilvy in Malaysia and make it one of the top creative offices in the region. Thereafter, as the chairman and ECD of Ogilvy Singapore, he helped the agency become the hottest agency in the region and the no.1 creative office of the WPP global network. In 2007 he led the agency for it to become the third highest awarded agency in the world at Cannes Lions. He is a prolific winner in most of the regional and international award shows like Cannes, Clio, D & AD, One Show, LIA, Andy Awards, AdFest, Spikes etc,
Kumar has been celebrated in India and recognized globally for the ability to amplify deep local insights into simple ideas that solve complicated marketing challenges. He has won India’s first and second Film Gold Lions at The Cannes Lions International Festival in 2009. His ideas have helped build several brands in India including: Levi’s, Nike, Google, Ford, etc. Kumar can be spotted in several creative books under the classifications of writer, creative director, designer, photographer and film maker. His work has risen beyond successful marketing case studies to mine over 100 international creative awards.
Katial is at the helm of one of India’s youngest media houses and is considered to be one of the most successful executives in the Indian media industry. A stint in adverting followed by over a decade of experience in broadcast with brands like Star and Sony and now Reliance Broadcast, Katial has successfully led high decibel launches of industry tent poles and has always been able to rightly tap the consumer’s pulse. Other significant achievements in Katial’s cap include being voted the NewsCorp Achiever for Asia and being included among the best in the ‘India Today 30 on 30’ list. He was also part of the team that won the first Media Gold at Cannes.
Chaudhry has over 24 years of brand communication and reputation management experience across industries and key global markets and is also founder president of the “Indian Forum Of Corporate Communicators” (IFCC). Chaudhry’s last assignment was as group president -corporate communications, Reliance Industries, prior to which he was head of communications at HUL and communications leader, Unilever South Asia. From building the corporate brand of Ranbaxy in North America, Europe and India, to aligning regional communication country teams to bring alive ‘the transition to one Unilever brand’ and driving the corporate name change from “HLL” to “HUL”, to putting together systems and processes for effective global (internal and external) communications at RIL, Chaudhry has led communications for many iconic and tentpole campaigns in India.
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.
