CHENNAI: The third edition of the Federation of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry‘s (Ficci) two day Media and Entertainment Business Conclave (MEBC 2011) with the theme ‘Embracing the Digital World‘ began here today.

Opening the inaugural session with the welcome address, Ficci Secretary General Rajiv Kumar said, "Though the Indian media and entertainment (M&E) industry has demonstrated global competitiveness, but its share in the global market it is still in terms of single digits and needs to be a bigger player in the global market place."

Chalking out Ficci‘s plans for the M&E industry, Kumar that Ficci has formed the Sector Skills Council in association with the National Skills Development Council which will help make available skills which are in short supply across industries and more so the media and entertainment industry. 

Ficci plans to promote digitalisation in the future and is inclusive across all the players. He said that at present India‘s share of location shooting is just one per cent and that Ficci would address the policy makers to have a single window clearance so that more dollars can be attracted for the country.

During his theme address, MEBC chairman Kamal Hasan said he has always been a promoter of digitisation and that digitising would help monetisation for entertainment industry as well as the government.

Digitisation has the potential for monetisation across the myriad platforms available and that in the case of digital, monetization begins with the box-office. He sent a strong message to the promoters of analogue saying that this is not a chest thumping exercise; it is to understand that these people would be gently eased into the digital world.

There were special addresses by the Tamil Film Producers Council SA Chandrasekaran, The South Indian Film Chamber President C Kalyan both of whom requested big production houses such as Reliance and UTV to help the small films by buying them and promoting them. "95 per cent of the films made in the country are small budget films. There are many good small budget films that suffer at the box office because of lack of marketing resources" said Chandrasekharan.

The inaugural session culminated with the release of Ficci-Deloitte Report by Tamil Nadu Governor K Rosaiah who suggested during his inaugural address that small producers should look at co-branding and sponsorships for promoting of their films.