MAM
Content India 2026 set to gather global media heavyweights in Mumbai
Dish TV and C21Media summit to spotlight commissioning, AI and global partnerships in India’s booming content industry
MUMBAI: Content India 2026 is gearing up to bring the country’s media powerbrokers under one roof. The three-day summit, organised by Dish TV India in partnership with C21Media, will run from March 16 to 18 at Taj Lands’ End, positioning itself as a high-octane meeting ground for broadcasters, streamers, studios and digital-first companies shaping the next phase of India’s entertainment economy.
The event aims to capture the accelerating global momentum around Indian content, bringing together industry leaders from across India and overseas to debate trends, forge partnerships and examine the future of the entertainment ecosystem.
Manoj Dobhal, ceo and executive director of Dish TV India, said the industry has reached a crucial inflection point. “Indian content has reached a pivotal point in the global market. As creators, platforms and studios focus on building stronger intellectual properties and forming international partnerships, the need for in-depth, results-driven dialogues is more crucial than ever. Content India 2026 will unite these voices to chart the next phase of the industry’s growth.”
Over three days, the summit will dive into commissioning strategies, production trends, monetisation models, cross-border collaborations, technology shifts and the growing importance of intellectual property in global entertainment.
A flagship session titled “State of the Indian Entertainment Nation” will explore the challenges and opportunities reshaping the content landscape. Speakers include Shilangi Mukherji, director and head of svod business at Prime Video; Anuj Gandhi, chief business officer for digital entertainment services at Reliance Jio; Deepak Dhar, founder and group ceo of Banijay Asia and Endemol Shine Asia; and Ashish Sehgal, ceo of Times TV Network.
Another highlight is the “Content India Co-Pro Pitch”, where early-stage scripted and unscripted projects seeking global partners will be showcased. Two winning projects—one scripted and one unscripted—will receive a £10,000 marketing prize. The judging panel includes Frank Spotnitz, ceo and founder of Big Light Productions; Fiona Campbell, director of factual at BBC Content; Rashmi Bajpai, evp Asia at Banijay Rights; Bal Samra, chairman of Big Deal Films; and Rachel Glaister, evp international brands and press at All3Media International.
Commissioning strategies will also come under scrutiny in a session examining what Indian buyers want from new content. Speakers include Sahira Nair, head of Hindi scripted series at Prime Video India; Rajaraman Sundaram, chief content officer south at Sony Pictures Networks India; Sai Abishek, head of factual entertainment at Warner Bros. Discovery South Asia; and Vishnu Mohta, co-founder of Hoichoi.
Production veterans will also dissect the mechanics of getting shows made and funded, with insights from Sunder Aaron, managing partner at Locomotive Global; Parveen Dusanj-Bedi, founder and md of CreativeNation; Roopak Saluja, founder of BANG BANG TV; Tarun Sawhney, president apac at ShortsTV; and filmmaker Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury.
Technology, particularly generative AI, will also dominate discussions. A dedicated panel on using AI to supercharge content creation will feature Dipankar Mukherjee, ceo and co-founder of Studio Blo; Prateek Arora, vp of development at BANG BANG TV; Anshul Vikram Pandey, founder and chairman of PanScience Group; Saiteja Alampally, founder and ceo of One Immersive; and Vipul Agrawal, founder and ceo of Mugafi.
The summit will also feature a fireside chat with Sameer Nair, managing director of Applause Entertainment, focusing on the evolution of Indian storytelling, intellectual property and AI-driven production.
Ashish Sehgal said the gathering arrives at a critical moment for the sector. “Content remains the core currency of our industry, and as discovery, distribution and monetisation evolve rapidly, the real opportunity lies in forging stronger partnerships and scalable models that power the next phase of India’s content growth.”
Anuj Gandhi echoed the sentiment. “Content India 2026 comes at a pivotal moment for our industry. As content creation, distribution and consumption evolve at scale, platforms like this play a critical role in aligning the ecosystem, encouraging collaboration and unlocking the next wave of growth in India’s content economy.”
With decision-makers, creators and investors converging in Mumbai, Content India 2026 is positioning itself as more than a conference. It aims to be a deal-making arena where ideas collide, partnerships form and the next chapter of India’s global entertainment rise begins to take shape.
Brands
Google secures AP discom licence to power $15bn Vizag AI hub
First-of-its-kind move gives tech giant grid control for massive 1GW campus
VISAKHAPATNAM: Google has secured a rare electricity distribution company licence in Andhra Pradesh, marking a decisive shift from being just a power consumer to becoming a power distributor for its upcoming mega data centre hub in Visakhapatnam.
The move effectively rewrites the rulebook for hyperscalers in India. Instead of relying on state utilities, Google will be able to procure electricity directly from generators, including its own renewable sources. This not only cuts out intermediaries but also gives the company tighter control over supply, reliability and long-term costs.
For a business where electricity can account for up to 60 per cent of operating expenses, the economics are hard to ignore. Even more critical is uptime. Data centres demand near-perfect reliability, and owning the distribution layer allows Google to manage outages and load balancing with far greater precision.
At the heart of the plan is a sprawling 1-gigawatt data centre ecosystem spread across more than 600 acres in three locations near Vizag. With an estimated investment of $15 billion over five years, the project is set to become India’s largest single foreign direct investment and Google’s biggest AI-focused facility outside the United States.
The campus is being designed with artificial intelligence workloads in mind, housing the company’s custom tensor processing units to power services such as Gemini, Search and Google Cloud. In scale, the planned capacity is comparable to powering a small city.
Google is not building alone. It has partnered with Adani Infrastructure to develop the physical campuses, while Bharti Airtel will set up an international subsea cable landing station. This connectivity backbone is expected to link the hub directly to a dozen countries, ensuring low latency for global data traffic.
Vizag’s coastal location plays a key role in that strategy. It enables direct access to subsea cables and provides the large volumes of water needed for cooling data centre operations. Equally important is policy backing from the Government of Andhra Pradesh, which fast-tracked approvals and granted the uncommon discom licence to anchor the investment.
Groundbreaking is scheduled for April 28, 2026, with phased commissioning expected to begin by July 2028.
The broader signal is clear. As AI workloads surge, hyperscalers are no longer content plugging into existing infrastructure. They are beginning to build and control it. In Vizag, Google is not just setting up a data centre, it is wiring up its own future.
