Anant Goenka urges India to turn creative scale into lasting value

MUMBAI: The creative economy may have more content than ever, but Anant Goenka believes the real premium will be on something in shorter supply attention, trust and ideas that stick. Opening FICCI FRAMES 2026 with his welcome address, FICCI president and RPG Group vice chairman Anant Goenka called on India’s media and entertainment industry to turn its enormous scale into lasting value while keeping Indian storytelling at its core.

Speaking at FICCI FRAMES 2026, themed ‘India’s Media Moment: Creating Value in an Age of Infinite Content’, Goenka noted how dramatically the industry has changed since FRAMES began 36 years ago. From films and television to streaming, music, sports, gaming and creator-led content, the boundaries between creators and consumers have increasingly blurred.

Today, he said, a person in a small town with little more than a phone and a good idea can potentially reach millions. But the abundance of content has also created a new competition, not simply for eyeballs, but for people’s limited time, attention and trust.

Goenka outlined four broad messages for the industry over the two-day event.

The first, he said, is for India to convert its scale into lasting value. With a vast audience, a young creative workforce and stories emerging from multiple languages, cultures and traditions, the opportunity is to create value for creators, businesses, audiences and the country.

The second is to keep Indian stories unmistakably Indian.

Goenka argued that India’s cultural diversity is one of its strongest creative assets. Travelling just a few hundred kilometres can bring a change in language, music, food and traditions, offering an unusually deep well of stories.

The industry, he said, once assumed Indian stories needed to become less local to find international audiences. Increasingly, the reverse is proving true, with stories rooted in specific places and cultures finding audiences because of their authenticity.

That authenticity, however, needs the right support to travel. Goenka called for Indian storytellers to have access to confidence, capital, technology and global reach without stripping away the qualities that make their work Indian.

A successful film, series or game, he noted, does not have to stop at its first release. It can expand across formats, platforms and experiences, making intellectual property a crucial part of the value chain.

“India creates memorable stories,” was the thrust of his message, but the bigger challenge is to become equally adept at building, protecting and monetising the intellectual property around those stories.

Technology formed another key part of the address. Goenka said artificial intelligence could widen access for young creators, improve production efficiency and help Indian stories travel across languages. At the same time, he flagged unresolved questions around jobs, copyright, attribution and creators’ rights.

As content becomes easier and cheaper to produce, he argued, originality becomes more valuable rather than less. Imagination, authenticity and human connection could determine which stories rise above an increasingly crowded content landscape.

Trust, too, is becoming a creative currency. With audiences navigating an endless stream of information, opinion and synthetic content, Goenka said people are constantly deciding what and whom to believe. Trust can take years to build but can disappear quickly.

The final message was perhaps the most commercial one: creativity must become a sustainable business.

For great work to flourish, creators need to earn a living, investors need room to take risks and businesses need to remain viable. Goenka also highlighted the need to protect intellectual property and privacy while enabling talent across writing, performance, design, technology and production to build enduring careers.

Over the two days of FRAMES 2026, these questions will play out across cinema, streaming, sports, gaming, AI, copyright and emerging forms of storytelling.

Goenka also pointed to FRAMES’ longer journey, noting that the event has brought industry and government together over the past two decades to discuss and shape the future of the sector.

The message at the opening was therefore less about producing more and more about creating something worth remembering. In an age where content can be infinite, the value of a genuinely human story may only become greater.