MAM
Praise and Brickbats!
Does Mindshare share as much goodwill amongst the media owners as it does amongst its clients?
Daily News & Analysis (DNA) sales & marketing head Suresh Balakrishnan: Mindshare is an agency that is usually on top of its business and is extremely aggressive on rates. This is one agency that has carried integration forward; while every agency has got its own integration platform, Mindshare has been able to mesh it together in a much more efficient manner.
Overall, their specialized division ATG, under Balu and Suku’s Broadmind is doing some exceptional work.
Where they fall short is in the public relations area. The second being their relationship with channels and media owners. By Mindshare’s sheer size, it gets better rates, but if it worked on its relationship management it would gallop a lot faster. As market leaders, they may need to take more aggressive steps to defining the market and taking it to the next level.
Prasar Bharati’s marketing director Vijayalaxmi Chhabra: From the DD perspective, we find Mindshare very professional. They are good negotiators and they don’t use their muscle power. They are the most proactive bunch and are always the first movers for any property. Their personnel are very qualitative driven and probably the best in the industry.
Mindshare are the best pay masters and DD has never faced problems around delayed payments. Although, considering its size and volume the agency might not be able to give enough attention to smaller clients.
What’s a negative is the fact that Mindshare planners are a young bunch who are city-bred, hence plans they sketch tend to be C&S skewed.
Zee Network EVP network sales Joy Chakraborthy: They are brilliant negotiators and manage good rates. The biggest advantage that Mindshare enjoys is the fact that it has total control of its clients. The agency also has very approachable and professional personnel who believe in structured planning and not ad hoc incremental buys. This is reflected from the fact that one-off movie premiers or events are never sponsored by Mindshare clients.
On the other hand, the agency is understaffed and usually a last minute mover. As Zee has moved into the network selling mode, Mindshare buyers still seem to work in five separate components hence channel executives do not have not one point contact and have to deal with a host of people.
RED FM COO Abraham Thomas – Mindshare has brought in a certain level of efficiency and transparency into the industry. It has tried to remove the subjectivity out of media buying. While there is internal benchmarking, it has driven home the fact that all clients cannot get the same deals. At one level, they act as independent units and therefore don’t apply the same yardsticks across all clients.
Mindshare works as independent business units and not in a uniform and homogeneous manner as they should. Given their size and the scope of their business, in their attempt to commoditise, they’re losing out on the qualitative aspects of brand associations and are unable to get premium properties for all their clients.
Eenadu & ETV group marketing head I Venkat – In my opinion Mindshare scores very high on the relationship management front and its back end processes. As a result things run in a smooth manner, which is not seen in other agencies. Also the agency exuberates positively. I would, however, recommend that they look into their current reception area and organise it better as it resembles a railway station.
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.
