At the CII Big Picture Summit 2025, Gaurav Banerjee, MD & CEO of Sony Pictures Networks India and Chairman of the CII National Council on Media & Entertainment, delivered opening keynote address that underlined a pivotal moment of transformation for India’s creative economy.

Addressing industry leaders and policymakers, he said the sector was standing at a rare generational crossroads where talent, technology, culture and ambition had aligned to create an unprecedented window of opportunity.

In his Keynote address, Banerjee reiterated that India’s Media & Entertainment sector is poised for exceptional growth, supported by insights from the CII White Paper. He highlighted that while the global M&E industry is set to touch $3.5 trillion by 2030, India is projected to grow 2.6 times faster than the world, despite currently accounting for just 2 percent of the global value.

This, he stressed, should not be viewed as a limitation but as extraordinary headroom—showing that a $100 billion Indian M&E industry is entirely within reach, provided the country acts with clarity, coherence and ambition.

Banerjee urged the industry to shift its mindset from domestic comfort to global aspiration.

He noted that Indian culture is travelling faster than ever—music charting abroad, creators reaching audiences worldwide, films resonating internationally—yet the country’s ambition has been historically contained within its vast home market.

Drawing parallels with South Korea’s strategic rise, from the early ‘Korean Wave’ to global phenomena like K-Pop, Parasite, and Squid Game, he said India must now ask the same question Korea once did: “Why should our market be only India? Why not the world?” He pointed to the success of Mahavtar Narasimha as an example of how new formats, bold storytelling and non-traditional genres are finding eager audiences, reinforcing that the constraint is not the market but the ambition placed on creative possibilities.

A significant portion of his speech focused on what India must build to become a global creative powerhouse. He emphasised that global leaders in creativity and innovation—such as Silicon Valley—were not accidents but outcomes of deliberate investments in talent, education and institutional ecosystems. India, he said, needs to create “the IPL of Creativity,” a system designed to discover, train and elevate talent across levels and languages.

Banerjee called for specialised institutions in writing, animation, VFX, gaming, design and post-production; stronger industry–academia linkages; regional creative clusters; and public–private partnerships executed with urgency. These, he said, are not gaps but opportunities that must be seized as the global appetite for Indian storytelling grows.

Turning to the emerging era of AI, Banerjee described this as the beginning of the “AI Decade,” a period filled with promise but also uncertainty. While AI will enhance efficiency and scalability, he asserted that it will never define creativity—adding that India’s real strength lies in human imagination, not tools. He welcomed the discussions ahead at the summit on using AI responsibly and ethically.

Banerjee concluded by urging the industry to raise its benchmarks and reimagine its definition of success. India, he said, should not evaluate progress merely by domestic scale but by global influence. If the sector builds world-class institutions, nurtures creators across languages and imagines boldly, he said, India will not just grow—it will lead.

With that, he welcomed participants to the CII Big Picture Summit 2025, calling on the industry to seize this moment and shape the decade of global Indian content.