MAM
From BroadMind to M Entertainment – focus on television content
MUMBAI: Group M’s specialist unit BroadMind is in the process of rebranding itself as M Entertainment, focussing exclusively on content.
And it is in television content that M Entertainment (globally BroadMind is already rebranded either as M Entertainment or Mindshare Entertainment) will primarily be active.
BroadMind currently is active in entertainment and sports. On the entertainment side, it involves product placement, co-productions, trading and syndication, and export of content. The sports unit within BroadMind functions like a fully fledged agency whose ambit is the integration of brands with sporting properties. An example of this is next Sunday’s (15 May) Lipton Bangalore International Marathon.
WPP Sports Agency Performance Launching This Year
The morphing of BroadMind into M Entertainment will also involve the hiving off of the sports division into a separate unit called Performance – Group M’s sports agency worldwide. Performance is slated to have its formal launch in India in the second half of the year.
BroadMind is in fact currently in talks with about five content companies and is in the process of signing MOU’s and JV’s to make greater inroads into the content space.
Elaborating on the changes in process, BroadMind national director M Suku says, “While branded content has always existed in some form or another, the emerging players in this space will take the content game to the next level.”
According to Suku, the agenda ahead will to use content as a platform to fuse brands into it in a seamless manner so as to make it part of the programming. Examples of such integration have already been seen with Star One’s Lakme India Fashion House and Sony’s recent Jassi.. and VLCC tie-up.
From Media Investments to Communication Investments
BroadMind will be positioning this whole proposition as a transition from media investments to communication investments.
Although, BroadMind’s foray into content creation is currently at a very nascent stage, Suku pointed out that “content commercial deals” will be the way forward in the television space. With this opening up, the television arena itself will then be able to scale up production budgets, which will then lead to big-ticket properties, he avers.
While content commercial deals are a common concept worldwide with specialist content units partnering with TV networks and production houses, in India, the concept has just about arrived.
Suku points out that such intitiatives will see the emergence of new revenue streams for all the parties involved, be it TV channels or the production houses, the content vendors.
Also, looking at it from the broadcaster’s point of view, this kind of brand alliance on the one hand allows for them to take programming to a different level as well as opens another channel for revenues.
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.
