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Digitisation spurs Sony, foreign media firms to invest in India
GOA: Global media companies are upping their investments in India in the wake of digitisation and the opening up of the pay-TV market.
Sony is aggressively investing in its Indian television broadcasting company, Multi Screen Media (MSM), as it seeks to launch niche channels and expand into the regional-language markets.
“Digitisation has given Sony a huge confidence to invest more in India. It first bought out the Indian shareholders in Multi Screen Media (MSM). It has also agreed to buy stake in regional broadcaster Maa TV,” said MSM CEO Man Jit Singh, while speaking at the India Digital Operators Summit (IDOS) 2012 jointly organised by Indiantelevision.com Group and Media Partners Asia.
Sony had bought out the stake of Indian shareholders for $271 million taking its stake to 94 per cent. The company had also marked its foray into the Southern market by acquiring 30 per cent stake in Maa Television Network. In 2009, it had acquired Channel 8, a Bengali movie channel, and later renamed it as Sony Aath.
“Digitisation is very important for attracting foreign investment into the media sector. We are seeing that in Sony. Good luck 1 November (analogue cable shuts off from that date in the four metros),” said Singh.
The whole value chain will gain from digitisation. For broadcasters, the over-dependence on advertising revenue will reduce and the business models will change. Subscription revenue will climb from 20 per cent to a 50 per cent ratio, providing broadcasters a stable source of income.
Broadcasters will also be able to launch a whole bunch of niche channels as carriage bandwidth capacity opens up.
Multi-system operators (MSOs) will get to own the customers. Though coming at a higher price, this will guarantee future revenues. They can also tap the broadband market, Singh added.
DTH will get a level-playing field and the competition between them and the cable players will be on service quality and innovation. Multiple revenue streams will evolve in future for all the stakeholders in the broadcast sector.
“What multiplexes did to the movie business, digitisation will do to the broadcast sector with much greater force. We will see broadband and a whole variety of content. Consumers will consume more content,” Singh said.
Den Networks CEO S N Sharma agreed that digitisation coupled with the hike in FDI (foreign direct investment) cap in carriage-distribution services would attract foreign investors. “The basic fundamental of the cable TV industry is being set right. Strategic and financial investors will be interested now,” he said.
Videocon d2h CEO Anil Khera, however, does not believe that there will be a quick inflow of foreign capital. “It is not like the foreign
investors will come with their bags full and invest here immediately. They will first study the market and look at the performance of the first phase of digitisation. Then they will decide on which companies they are going to invest,” he explained.
Private equity firms will possibly step in first. “Strategic investors will do a lot of due diligence. I also don‘t think there is that whole organisational preparedness among Indian carriage-distribution companies,” said Raman Kalra, media & entertainment head at IBM for India and South Asia.
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Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
