Google, Meta, JioStar Lead India's Top Media & Entertainment

Google, Meta, and JioStar are the dominant media and entertainment giants in India, leading the sector by a significant margin. Bennett, Coleman and Company, the publisher of The Times of India, ranks a distant fourth. In 2024, JioStar, which includes Viacom18 and Disney-Star India, merged to form a single entity.

The presence of a mainstream media firm in the top three is primarily due to this factor. Had Sony and Zee gone ahead with their merger, they would have surpassed Bennett, crossing a top line of Rs 15,000 crore. The ongoing consolidation in the industry is now clearly reflected in the growing concentration of both audience and revenue share within India’s Rs 2.3 trillion media and entertainment sector.

The first striking observation from the list of the top 12 media firms in India, using annual reports and figures from the Registrar of Companies for FY24, these companies collectively account for more than half of the entire media industry.

Secondly, the evolving nature of the media ecosystem is significant. The top two firms, which collectively reach nearly all of India’s 523 million online users (Comscore), dominate the ad-driven and user-generated content space. This encompasses social media, short-form videos, search, and influencers. Mainstream companies that produce series, films, music, or news are positioned lower in this hierarchy. A significant portion of the music and videos they create also fuels the user-generated content sector. However, for the time being, it is Google and Meta that hold the upper hand.

This leads to the third key point: Google and Meta together accounted for more than 95 percent of the Rs 64,500 crore spent on digital media in 2023. Combined, they represent over a quarter of the entire Indian media and entertainment industry.