India's Entertainment Industry

India has experienced a rise in income levels as well as economic growth in recent times.

This is partly to the entertainment industry in India which is one of the fastest growing sectors in the country’s economy.

Today the industry stands at about Rs. 20,000 which is an equivalent of $4.65 billion and it is growing at about 18% annually.

The entertainment industry is at the moment experiencing a huge shift in the distribution of entertainment with channels such as wireless communication, the internet and broadband coming into play. Gone are the days when the television, newspapers and radio were the only means through which entertainment could be distributed to the public.

Bollywood
Filmed entertainment or Bollywood as it is popularly referred to all across the world is and has remained for a long time the most popular entertainment form in India. As a matter of fact, India’s film industry is the largest in the world – ever larger than Hollywood – when measured in terms of number of films that are produced and admitted in a year. The number is about 3 billion in a year.

The popularity of Bollywood has soared also owing to the growing number of Indians living in foreign countries; there are about 3.5 million Indians living in the US today. This rising number of overseas viewers has encouraged movie producers in India to produce movies that have cross over themes.

Indians also watch movies box office movies; in 2004, the most popular western movie was Spiderman2 which prompted the translation of the movie to three different Indian languages.

Television
The television industry in India is slowly catching up to its film industry. More channels are being added to Indian television that has new content formats. Reality shows and niche channels are also making a showing in the Indian television industry.

The next five years are likely to be driven by subscription revenues because of the rising number of households that cable and satellite television. There is expected growth in television advertising by at the very least 5% in the years to come.

Owing to the fact that the entertainment industry in India is experiencing rapid growth, it is likely to see an upsurge of investments from different quarters. These sources include venture capitalists, private equity as well as public investors. This essentially means that the booming Indian entertainment industry is here to stay.