Hindi
Agnello Dais and Piyush Pandey get acting bug
MUMBAI: Well, we‘ve all seen Piyush Pandey and Agnello Dias going on stage and being acclaimed as creative geniuses. Now, we will get to see them try their hand at histrionics on the big screen. Courtesy good friend and filmmaker Shoojit Sircar – who made Ayushman Khurana a household name through Vicky Donor.
His current project Madras Café is slated to feature the Taproot India co-founder & chief creative officer Aggie (as he is called by advertising colleagues) and the south Asia Ogilvy & Mather India executive chairman & creative director Piyush Pandey.
For Piyush getting on screen is nothing new; having featured in TVCs and in ads. But it is a first for creativity‘s brainchild, Aggie who decided to shy away from a conversation with indiantelevision.com.
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Says Shoojit Sircar: “We always try to tell different stories and try our hands at different genres. I have previously too tried to get Piyush Pandey as a cast member and this time we were looking for someone who could play the role of a senior bureaucrat. I think the way Piyush has acted in the movie, people might be all the more keen on casting him. As regards Agnello Dais, he too is a good friend. We got stuck while casting when we had to cast a Sri Lankan face to play the role of a minister. I think I found that in him!”
Piyush Pandey, on the other hand, states that he has no inclination toward acting in movies and that he chose to do so out of goodwill and friendship, “I think Madras Café is a very meaningful and interesting film. For me to act in a movie, I feel Madras Café is a wonderful project to be associated with. Shoojit is a dear friend to me and I acted because he thought that he could get the factor he wanted out of me!” he says.
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The film is rumored to be filmed on the lines of Hollywood films like Argo and the Body of Lies. Sircar claims to have taken the subject from the 90s era in Sri Lanka. The movie is about a RAW agent- John Abraham – who is in a war-like situation and gets into a covert operation to finally save his country.
To market a movie to attract the attention of cinema going audiences requires the movie to be intriguing, exciting, informative and entertaining. Viacom18 Motion Pictures marketing & operations head Rudrarup Datta, Head says: “The weight of the movie is based not on the journey of Captain Vikram Singh doing intelligence work but on what the world is like while being in situations in an intelligence job. It is not like the normal James Bond movie; it‘s going to be more real. And we are also looking at this film getting acclaim internationally.”
Meanwhile, the first official trailer (which was released on 12 July) has been making waves on YouTube, having got close to 195,000 views at the time of writing. And the team at Viacom18 put in a lot of promotional effort to get the numbers going. For instance, before its official release, Vaicom 18 drew up a campaign where viewers had to crack a code to watch the 20 second trailer.
Hindi
India’s telecom subscribers cross 1.32 billion in February 2026
Broadband base swells past 1.06 billion as Jio and Airtel tighten grip on the market.
MUMBAI: India’s telecom sector is ringing in steady growth once again adding millions of new connections every month while the race for broadband supremacy continues to heat up like a fiercely contested cricket match. According to the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 1 April 2026, the total telephone subscriber base in the country reached 1,321.31 million at the end of February 2026. This marked a net addition of 7.31 million subscribers during the month, translating into a monthly growth rate of 0.56 per cent.
Wireless subscribers (including mobile and Fixed Wireless Access) stood at 1,273.31 million, registering a net addition of 6.97 million and a growth rate of 0.55 per cent. Within this, urban wireless connections grew to 730.75 million (growth 0.70 per cent), while rural wireless subscribers reached 542.56 million (growth 0.35 per cent).
Wireline subscribers, though much smaller in scale, showed slightly faster growth. The total wireline base increased to 47.99 million, with a net addition of 0.34 million and a monthly growth rate of 0.70 per cent. Urban areas continued to dominate wireline connections with a share of 89.41 per cent.
Overall tele-density in India improved to 92.66 per cent. Urban tele-density stood at 150.68 per cent, while rural tele-density edged up to 60.02 per cent.
The broadband subscriber base crossed a significant milestone, reaching 1,059.05 million at the end of February 2026. This reflected a healthy net addition of 6.33 million subscribers and a monthly growth rate of 0.60 per cent from January’s figure of 1,052.72 million.
Segment-wise, mobile wireless access continued to drive the majority of growth with 996.52 million subscribers. Fixed Wireless Access (including 5G FWA) added 16.51 million, while wired broadband stood at 46.02 million.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. maintained its commanding lead with 519.64 million broadband subscribers. Bharti Airtel Ltd. followed with 364.14 million, Vodafone Idea Ltd. with 129.36 million, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. with 28.70 million, and Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. with 2.38 million.
Together, these top five players command a massive 98.60 per cent share of the total broadband market.
In the wireless (mobile) segment, private operators continued to dominate with 92.59 per cent market share, leaving public sector undertakings (BSNL and MTNL) with just 7.41 per cent.
Out of the total 1,257.29 million wireless (mobile) subscribers, 1,177.60 million were active on the peak Visitor Location Register (VLR) date, representing an impressive 93.66 per cent activity rate. Bharti Airtel led in this metric with 99.42 per cent of its subscribers active.
Meanwhile, 14.47 million subscribers submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in February, indicating healthy competition and customer churn across zones.
While urban areas still lead in absolute numbers, rural connectivity is slowly catching up. Rural wireless tele-density stood at 59.46 per cent, compared with the much higher urban figure of 142.32 per cent.
Fixed Wireless Access using 5G technology also showed promising traction, growing to 11.93 million subscribers. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are the primary players driving this segment.
The data paints a picture of a maturing yet still rapidly expanding telecom ecosystem. With total telephone subscribers now well past the 1.32 billion mark and broadband users comfortably above 1.06 billion, India continues to solidify its position as one of the world’s largest and most dynamic digital markets.
From bustling city streets to remote villages, more Indians are staying connected than ever before proving that when it comes to telecom, the country’s appetite for growth shows no signs of hanging up anytime soon.
