iWorld
Orange Alert as Media Chiefs Call Time on Sour Regulation
MUMBAI: When your brightest industry minds start comparing creativity to citrus fruit, you know the discussion’s got some zest. At FICCI FRAMES 2025, the session titled “Regulating the Orange Economy: Past, Present, and Future” turned into a spirited masterclass on what’s holding back India’s most vibrant export creativity itself.
Moderated by Koan Advisory’s Vivan Sharan, the panel brought together some of the sharpest voices in Indian broadcasting Avinash Pandey (CEO, Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation), Krishnan Kutty, head of cluster, Entertainment (South) – JioStar, Anil Malhotra (COO, Zee Media), and Yatin Gupta (COO, GTPL Hathway). Together, they dissected the bitter-sweet evolution of India’s media and entertainment (M&E) industry from its liberalisation glory days to today’s tangled web of red tape and regulation.
Avinash Pandey kicked things off with a nostalgic rewind. “We were declared an industry in 1996, and for a brief while, we were actually treated like one,” he said dryly, drawing laughter from the crowd. He recounted how the early 2000s saw broadcasting boom as a sunrise sector driven by investment, private innovation, and minimal interference.
“Then came a time when the government helped us grow,” he continued. “But today, every little aspect from pricing to packaging is regulated. We are living under a 2005 framework in a 2025 economy.”
Pandey’s lament set the tone. The orange economy shorthand for industries fuelled by creativity and culture has turned ripe, but over-regulation, panelists warned, risks turning it sour.
Krishnan Kutty of JioStar took the baton, calling for “a lighter hand and a smarter head” in policymaking. He drew a sharp comparison between legacy broadcasters and digital-first platforms. “Television is capped, controlled, and scrutinised. OTT platforms, meanwhile, stream what they want with almost no oversight,” he said.
Kutty argued that the answer isn’t to regulate the new, but to liberate the old. “Over-prescription kills innovation. Consumers don’t need protection from choice they need access to more of it.” His words echoed across an audience that included broadcasters, policymakers, and streaming executives all trying to decode the new power balance between screens.
Anil Malhotra from Zee Media added historical perspective and a dose of irony. “Cable TV arrived in India in 1985. It was regulated only in 1995. Broadcasting began in 2005, got regulated much later,” he said. “Regulation always comes late to the party and then overstays its welcome.”
Malhotra argued that in a digital-first world, it makes no sense to hold traditional media hostage to older rulebooks. “If the government doesn’t regulate new tech like OTT and AI, it must deregulate the old. Otherwise, you’re penalising the legacy systems that built India’s media strength in the first place.”
He also called for a “policy audit,” a comprehensive review of old broadcasting rules to identify those that have outlived their relevance. “We need regulation that enables, not restricts,” he stressed.
GTPL Hathway’s Yatin Gupta brought the discussion closer to ground reality and homes still running on coaxial cables. “We’re the most regulated part of the media chain,” he said bluntly. “Every rate, every fee, every package is dictated. Yet, we’re expected to compete with digital platforms that face no such limits.”
Gupta pointed out that India’s cable homes have dropped from 150 million a few years ago to around 100 million today, a staggering 30 per cent loss in a market still hungry for affordable entertainment. “We can’t evolve if we’re boxed in,” he added. “If the aim is to take India fully digital, we must support the legacy infrastructure that connects Bharat to the world.”
He called for skill development, broadband integration, and hybrid models that let cable operators transform into full-fledged digital service providers. “If we don’t, we’ll end up with an uneven playing field and an excluded audience.”
By the time Avinash Pandey took the mic again, his tone had sharpened. “Regulators talk about ‘orderly growth’,” he said with a knowing smile. “That’s a Soviet-era phrase. You can’t dictate how creativity grows, it defeats the very nature of innovation.”
He urged policymakers to think of the media sector as a living organism, one that thrives on unpredictability. “Creativity doesn’t follow command-and-control models. It needs chaos, experimentation, and freedom to fail.”
The audience broke into applause when he declared, “If you want free markets, let the market breathe.”
Despite the fiery debate, the panel didn’t write television off. Far from it. “TV still delivers high-quality entertainment at the lowest cost per viewer,” Pandey noted. “There are over 100 million Indians yet to own a television. Growth is far from over but it will stall if innovation is strangled.”
The panellists agreed that the future of India’s media sector lies in convergence television and digital not competing, but coexisting. With global streamers investing heavily in Indian stories and regional content booming across states, the creative economy stands at a crossroads.
As the discussion wound down, what emerged was less of a gripe and more of a roadmap: deregulate the old, modernise the law, empower talent, and let creativity not bureaucracy set the tone.
In a nation bursting with storytellers, artists, and innovators, the message was clear: the Orange Economy shouldn’t be juiced dry by rules made for an analogue age.
If India truly wants to be a global creative powerhouse exporting not just IT services but imagination, it must give its creators the same freedom its coders enjoy. Or as one delegate quipped while leaving the hall, “You can’t make lemonade with red tape.”
iWorld
Netflix celebrates a decade in India with Shah Rukh Khan-narrated tribute film
MUMBAI: Netflix is celebrating ten years in India with a slick anniversary film voiced by Shah Rukh Khan, a nostalgic sprint through a decade that rewired how the country watches stories. The campaign doubles as both tribute and reminder: streaming did not just enter Indian homes, it quietly rearranged them.
Roll back to 2016 and television still dictated schedules. Viewers waited weeks, sometimes months, for favourite films to appear on prime time. Family-friendly filters narrowed options further, and piracy often filled the gaps. Then Netflix arrived, softly but decisively, carrying a catalogue of international titles rarely seen in Indian theatres and placing them a click away. Old blockbusters and new releases suddenly coexisted on the same digital shelf.
The platform’s real inflection point came in 2018 with Sacred Games, a breakout series that refused to dilute India’s grit for global comfort. Audiences embraced its unvarnished tone, signalling readiness for stories that did not need box-office validation or censorship compromises. What followed was a steady procession of relatable narratives. Competitive-exam anxiety fuelled Kota Factory. College relationships unfolded in Mismatched. Everyday pressures, not grand spectacle, proved bankable.
Language barriers thinned as foreign series arrived with Hindi, Tamil and Telugu dubbing, expanding viewership beyond urban English-speaking pockets. Marketing mirrored the shift. For global releases such as Squid Game, Netflix leaned on regional creators and influencers to localise buzz and make international content feel native.
The library widened beyond fiction. Documentaries stepped out of festival circuits into living rooms. Stand-up comedians found scale. Established filmmakers, including Sanjay Leela Bhansali with Heeramandi, embraced the platform’s long-form canvas. Subscriber numbers swelled to 12.37 million in India, according to Demandsage, and behaviour followed suit. Late-night binges became routine. Friday release rituals loosened. Watch parties turned solitary screens into social events.
Economics demanded adjustment. Early subscription pricing carried a premium aura that deterred many households. Over time, Netflix recalibrated plans to align with Indian spending sensibilities, conceding that accessibility is as critical as content. To extend momentum around marquee titles, the platform also experimented with split-season releases, stretching anticipation and watch time.
The anniversary film, narrated by Shah Rukh Khan, captures the linguistic shift that mirrors the cultural one: from “Netflix pe kya dekha?” to “Netflix pe kya dekhein?” The question moved from recounting the past to planning the next binge. In ten years, Netflix morphed from foreign entrant to familiar fixture, exporting Indian stories abroad while importing global ones home. The remote no longer waits; it chooses, clicks and moves on. In the streaming age, patience is out, playlists are in, and the next episode is always one tap away.
e-commerce
Tulasi Mohan Padavala elevated to Associate Director at Blinkit
Gurugram: Blinkit has elevated Tulasi Mohan Padavala to associate director, capping a three-year climb inside the quick-commerce firm and signalling confidence in an executive steeped in ecommerce, category management and on-ground sales execution.
Padavala shared the update publicly, saying he was “happy to share” the promotion, a succinct announcement that nevertheless marks a notable step up within one of India’s fastest-moving delivery platforms. The new role follows nearly three years at Blinkit, where he most recently served as senior category manager from February 2023 to January 2026, focusing on strategic sourcing and assortment planning.
The promotion places Padavala in Blinkit’s mid-to-senior leadership tier at a time when the company continues to expand its rapid-delivery footprint and sharpen category economics. His brief tenure as associate director began in January 2026, with responsibilities expected to span category growth, supplier strategy and cross-functional execution.
Before Blinkit, Padavala spent a short but intensive stint as global ecommerce manager at Wholsum Foods, the parent of Slurrp Farm and Millé, between November 2022 and February 2023. There he worked on digital marketplace expansion and online retail operations, adding a direct-to-consumer and international ecommerce layer to his résumé.
A longer stretch at Amazon shaped much of his cross-border commerce experience. As business development manager for Amazon’s India Global Selling programme from February 2021 to October 2022, Padavala helped Indian D2C brands enter the North American market. His remit ranged from seller recruitment and category revenue management to coordination with industry bodies, regulators and logistics partners. Key outcomes included launching more than 50 D2C consumable brands in the United States, driving a cumulative gross merchandise sales figure of $1m in FY21-22, tripling sales for participating brands during Prime Day through marketing and visibility levers, growing the monthly recurring revenue of more than 10 newly launched sellers from zero to an average $20,000 each, and negotiating ecommerce partnerships that reduced initial launch costs by 20 per cent.
Padavala’s earlier career was forged in the field rather than the dashboard. At Coffee Day Group, he spent close to five years across multiple sales leadership roles. As sales manager in the Greater Delhi Area from July 2019 to January 2021, he led vending-machine and consumables sales for small and medium enterprises with a team of more than 15 assistant and territory sales managers, managed over 2,000 clients, drove upselling and cross-selling, maintained channel partnerships and ensured timely collections. Prior to that, he served as area sales manager in Delhi between May 2018 and June 2019, handling south and east Delhi markets, and earlier in Hyderabad from April 2016 to May 2018, where he led Andhra Pradesh sales for the vending division, supervised service and logistics functions and managed a base of more than 600 machines with a four-member team.
His professional arc began with internships that combined analytics and process improvement. At Boehringer Ingelheim in 2015, Padavala analysed the impact of brand extension on the drug Pradaxa, identified key performance indicators through market research and assessed sales forecasts, recommendations that drew positive responses in pilot studies. Earlier, at Genpact in 2014, he automated manual sales-order backlog reporting using VBA and Excel, increasing efficiency by 800 per cent, and worked on benchmarking metrics within supply-chain planning processes.
From automating spreadsheets to scaling cross-border ecommerce and now steering quick-commerce categories, Padavala’s trajectory tracks the evolution of India’s retail economy itself. Blinkit’s bet is clear: blend data, discipline and delivery speed. The promotion formalises what his career already suggests. In the race for instant commerce, experience that moves from warehouse floors to global dashboards is no longer optional. It is the engine.
e-commerce
Bharatpe plays a super over as Rohit Sharma fronts T20 push
MUMBAI: When the stakes rise and seconds matter, even payments need a match-winning finish. That’s the cue for Bharatpe, which has rolled out Super Over, a nationwide campaign led by Indian cricket captain Rohit Sharma, timed neatly ahead of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.
The campaign draws a straight line between the pulse of cricket and the pace of everyday digital payments. A new brand film taps into India’s emotional bond with the game, while positioning UPI as the quiet hero that keeps daily transactions ticking along at match speed.
As part of Super Over, users making payments via Bharatpe UPI can bag daily rewards ranging from match tickets and signed merchandise to a chance to watch a T20 World Cup fixture alongside Rohit Sharma himself. Both consumers and merchants are also assured Zillion Coins on every eligible transaction, adding a little extra sparkle to routine payments.
Behind the scenes, Bharatpe is also batting for safety. The platform is backed by Bharatpe Shield, a fraud-protection layer designed to offer enhanced security, comprehensive coverage and dedicated support aimed at helping users transact with greater confidence as digital payments scale up.
Announcing the campaign, Bharatpe head of marketing Shilpi Kapoor said Super Over mirrors the aspirations of everyday Indians, combining speed, security and instant rewards to make UPI transactions feel both reliable and rewarding.
The campaign will play out across digital platforms, social media and on-ground activations nationwide, staying live through the T20 World Cup season proof that in cricket, as in payments, timing is everything.
-
iWorld4 days agoNetflix celebrates a decade in India with Shah Rukh Khan-narrated tribute film
-
I&B Ministry3 months agoIndia steps up fight against digital piracy
-
iWorld3 months agoTips Music turns up the heat with Tamil party anthem Mayangiren
-
iWorld12 months agoBSNL rings in a revival with Rs 4,969 crore revenue
-
MAM3 months agoHoABL soars high with dazzling Nagpur sebut
-
News Broadcasting2 months agoCNN-News18 dominates Bihar election coverage with record viewership
-
News Broadcasting13 hours agoMukesh Ambani, Larry Fink come together for CNBC-TV18 exclusive
-
MAM3 months agoKapil Sethi joins Network18 as head of technology
