WAVES Summit: JioStar’s big bet in India, will spend Rs 33 thousand crores on entertainment!
JioStar is India’s largest media company formed by the merger of Reliance Industries’ Viacom18 and Walt Disney’s Indian unit. The company has made a big announcement at the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) going on in Mumbai. The company is going to make a big investment for entertainment in India. During the summit, JioStar announced that it is going to spend Rs 33 thousand crore on content. The company has made this announcement for the financial year 2025-26 (FY26). Let us know what is the meaning of this announcement.
JioStar is preparing to give a big dose of entertainment to Indian users. JioStar has announced (via) an investment of Rs 33,000 crore during the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES). The company’s Vice-Chairman Uday Shankar gave this information while speaking at the WAVES Summit. He said that in just 3 years (2024, 2025 and 2026) the company is going to spend $ 10 billion (about Rs 8 trillion).
He said that when the media company is spending, then its The investment is only for Indian consumers, for their taste, and for their needs. The company’s investment is only for the Indian audience and the recovery of this investment will also be from India. He highlighted the importance of developing India’s storytelling ecosystem instead of relying on global content. That is, India itself has immense potential for content and global content is not needed here.
He further said that the existing business models of advertising and subscription in the market have become outdated. There has been no major innovation in this field in the media and entertainment industry for many years. He emphasized that a new approach is needed for monetization in the industry, which will help Indian media companies to get a bigger valuation than global giants like Netflix and Tencent. On the same occasion, Vivek Couto, Managing and Executive Director of Media Partners Asia, said that the value of the Indian media industry is $ 30 billion, while in the US it is $ 200 billion and in China it is $ 75 billion.
On the other hand, JioStar aims to deliver content to tier-2, tier-3, and tier-4 cities in India along with tier-1 cities. Because there is still a huge scope for content creation and reachability for tier-3, and especially tier-4 cities that is yet to be filled.
