India is rapidly becoming one of the world’s media powerhouses, making leaders of the global entertainment business attending last week’s MIPCOM audiovisual trade show sit up and take notice.

“The media companies in India have readied themselves, they are now powerful and I think that they are ready to take on the world,” Paul Johnson, television director for the show’s organiser Reed MIDEM, told a press conference in this southern French city.

This year’s MIPCOM, which closed on Friday, gave a special focus to the Indian media industry.

“We think that India will be one of the top three entertainment countries in the world in the coming years,” he emphasised.

The country’s  future is promising, owing to its huge youthful population. With 54 per cent of the country’s 1.1 billion people aged under 25, India is one of the world’s potentially largest markets for TV.