Indian M and E seen growing 14 percent by 2015

Bracing for exciting times ahead, the M&E industry in India for the current calendar year 2011 is estimated to achieve 13 per cent growth to touch Rs 738 billion, said a FICCI sponsored KPMG analysis and industry report unveiled on Wednesday here. 

While television and print continue to dominate the Indian M&E industry, sectors like gaming, digital advertising and animation VFX (special effects) also show tremendous potential in the coming years, the report stated. By 2015, the report continued, television is expected to account for almost half of the Indian M&E industry revenues, and more than twice the size of print, the second largest media sector. 

The contribution of advertising revenue to overall industry pie is expected to increase from 38 per cent in 2007 to 42 per cent in 2012.

For the M&E industry in the country, it was also a year that witnessed a shift in favour of digital technologies as DTH (direct-to-home) touched 28 million net subscribers and digital music sales surpassed that of physical formats.  With growing interest from advertisers and private equity firms, regional print markets continued to attract their share of attention.

What’s more? India also emerged as the seventh largest global market for social media consumption and as a consequence saw greater focus from companies to identify more relevant and perosnal ways of reaching out and engaging with their target audience.

Pointing out key trends and drivers for growth going forward, the Report also pointed out Indian M&E companies implemented cost reduction strategies to weather the economic slowdown of 2008-09. 

While industry projections look optimistic, increasing competition is creating greater pressure on margins, it said adding: “In order to sustain profitable growth, several cost control initiatives implemented during the slowdown have continued to prevail desite the industry resuming its double digit growth rate.”

Digitisation continues to be a key growth for the Indian M&E industry and this trend was even more pronounced in 2010.  And with the regulatory push on digitisation, increasing mobile and broadband penetration and ongoing 3G rollouts, the market for digital distribution is only expected to grow, it noted.

Conceding that the Indian M&E industry is currently extremely fragmented, it also pointed out that some mature players are increasingly looking to build scale across the media value chain and explore cross media synergies. 

In addition, it noted, existing foreign players are looking to expand their Indian portfolio and several others are expected to make an entry into India.  In short, it said: “Inorganic growth is likely to be a preferred route for many of these players.

With increased digitization and accountability, Indian media companies are also expected to generate greater interest from private equity players. Even as the industry is poised for exciting times ahead, the Report views that the road may not be smooth. 

For one, the industry grapples with certain challenges such as increasing fragmentation, revenue leakages and a need for more sophisticated industry measurement systems.

Though some of these issued could get addressed through digitization, government intervention, adoption of secure distribution platforms and thrust on addressability, “the process is likely to be gradual.”