MAM
Fareed Jawad is VP and principal product architect at Freecharge
New Delhi: Fareed Jawad has been appointed the principal product architect and vice president (VP) payments at digital payments platform Freecharge. In his new role, Fareed’s mandate will be to build payments technologies at Freecharge. Additionally, he will lead the efforts on building technologies for solving the unique payments problems in India.
Freecharge is on a mission to build the world-class payments ecosystem for merchants and customers. The company seeks to work collaboratively with various innovators and emerging FinTech players to implement the most reliable and frictionless payment method and Fareed will be instrumental in driving this with the senior leadership team at Freecharge.
Prior to his appointment at Freecharge, Fareed most recently served as principal product architect at Amazon India, where he was responsible for building the core payment processing infrastructure for the organization. Before joining Amazon, Fareed was with Flipkart as director for Product Management and was part of the core team that launched PayZippy.
“Fareed’s appointment reaffirms Freecharge’s commitment to hiring the industry’s best talent. We are on a cusp of a revolution to accelerate the FinTech capabilities in India. We look forward to Fareed’s contribution in strengthening our technical expertise and payments capabilities with his in-depth understanding of payments sector. Fareed will be responsible for developing products for customers and merchants both online and offline, in line with our vision to be the digital OS for the payments business in India.” said Freecharge COO Govind Rajan.
Fareed has been in the payments industry right from the earliest payment gateways with VeriFone in the US. He has also been part of large payment processors like Moneris Solutions in Canada and eFunds/FIS where he helped enhance the acceptance and issuance platforms for Chip Card processing.
Jawad said “Freecharge is one of the most exciting brands in the digital payments sector today and I am happy to be part of this growth journey. I look forward to creating core payment assets that will help our customers experience a frictionless payments ecosystem in the country and establish FreeCharge as the leader in the Payments space.”
Fareed has a bachelors degree in Computer Science Engineering from Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering, Bengaluru.
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.
