The curtain raiser of the first World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit 2024 took place in Goa this week. A landmark event for the Media and Entertainment sector, WAVES 2024 will take place from November 20th to 24th, 2024 in Goa and the event will bring together industry professionals and thought leaders from across the world to catalyze the growth of Media and Entertainment (M&E) sector in India.
Speaking at the curtain raiser, the Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Ashwini Vaishnaw said that media and entertainment industry is going through a structural change with waves of technology which have not only opened new opportunities but also caused concerns among participants not able to keep up with the change. He said that the Government is committed to supporting the entire ecosystem of media and entertainment in coping with this change.
Vaishnaw stated that the role of public policy and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision is that India should be able to harness the best out of this structural change: “It should be able to support the people, the industry and the entire M&E ecosystem, in coping with the change in technology. This requires a nuanced way of looking at each and every detail of the industry. This requires a lot of effort, hand-holding, creating the talent pool and getting the right technology.”
The minister emphasized the key agenda points for the sector in PM Modi’s third term.
“In the coming months and years, we would be focusing a lot on creating growth in employment in the M&E industry. It has to be increased significantly and we will be making structural and process efforts,” he said.
Elaborating further, the minister said the structural efforts are aimed at developing an ecosystem where high quality talent can be created, where IP rights can be developed, where the world sees India as a natural place for establishing their content creation teams and centers.
The structural effort will be aimed at further increasing and augmenting this talent, creating more mentorship programs and building capacity. In addition to making the right tools and technology accessible, in line with PM Modi’s vision of the democratization of technology.
Drawing parallels to efforts in the electronics and telecom industries, Vaishnaw said that best practices from these sectors will be adopted for the M&E sector, so that talent skill and capacity building and education related to M&E can be used as power to generate more employment.
Vaishnaw also said that efforts will be made to bring changes to better protect IP rights which hold a huge value in the M&E world. “We will be strengthening the ecosystem for protecting IP rights,” the minister said in his address.
Another major agenda item highlighted by the I&B minister is access to funds. “This is very significant part of our effort towards the structural improvements in M&E industry… We will have to create structures, where we learn from the world of VC capital, and work out solutions which can be applied to M&E.”
“These efforts will requite tremendous tenacity, a lot of interaction and closely coordinated efforts between the media & entertainment, the financial world and the world of tech. These will require very well thought-through policy interventions, and I hope that in the coming months and years the industry and the government will work very closely towards making these efforts successful.”