Inside the sprawling Jio World Center in Mumbai, India’s inaugural World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit (WAVES) unfurled with the kind of confident swagger you’d expect from a country quietly vying to be the next capital of the global digital economy.
SurveyAlongside a marquee keynote by India’s PM Narendra Modi, a rousing creator economy declaration was made by YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen pitched for India as a global design studio, and Reliance Industries’ (and Jio’s) chairman Mukesh Ambani signalled India’s growing importance in the global creative economy – both from a creator and consumption perspective.
Here are some key observations…
YouTube’s ₹850 crore bet on India’s digital talent
Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, came bearing a statistic-laden love letter to India’s creators. “India isn’t just a world leader in film and music,” Mohan declared. “It’s rapidly becoming a Creator Nation.”
He based this on the fact that YouTube paid out over ₹21,000 crore to Indian creators, artists, and media companies in the past three years. Yes, that’s not a typo.
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What’s more, Mohan announced a fresh ₹850 crore investment over the next two years to supercharge India’s creator economy, including infrastructure, skilling, and possibly new monetization formats. With over 15,000 Indian channels clocking 1 million+ subscribers and Indian content drawing 45 billion watch hours globally, the subcontinent is no longer just consuming the internet – it’s exporting culture, byte by byte for the rest of the world to explore.
Adobe believes India will be “world’s creativity capital”
While Silicon Valley giants often talk about moonshots, Adobe’s India-born CEO Shantanu Narayen aimed a little closer to home. “Bharat ka agla boom won’t be in software,” he said, according to a Mashable India report, “but in creativity.”
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Narayen didn’t mince words: “India’s creative industry can employ more people than manufacturing.” It’s a bold pivot, and it comes with some real-world backing. Adobe rolled out partnerships with the Ministry of Education, Accenture, and TCS Interactive to bring AI-powered creativity tools to classrooms – starting with CBSE, PM Shri, Kendriya Vidyalayas, and Army Public Schools.
According to CEO Shantanu Narayen, Adobe is also embedding itself into India’s creative infrastructure – through WAVES Bazaar and the newly announced Indian Institution of Creative Technology – seeding a future where the next creative genius of the likes Tarantino or Miyazaki might just come from an Indian city or town.
Mukesh Ambani: “1.4 billion creators, not just consumers”
In what felt less like a corporate keynote and more like a digital manifesto, Reliance Industries’ and Jio chairman Mukesh Ambani reframed India’s demographic dividend as a content powerhouse.
“This is not just a statistic,” he said of India’s 1.4 billion people with an average age of 29. “It is a profile of a demographic, economic, and creative superpower.”
The billionaire who bet big on 4G and brought cheap data through Jio to the masses is now calling his shot on media and entertainment. He argues that India is no longer following the global entertainment wave – it’s actually shaping it. “Indian VFX is powering Hollywood blockbusters. Our mobile phones are not just consumption devices – they are 1.2 billion screens for creation and storytelling,” said Ambani during his speech on the opening day at WAVES 2025.
He also hinted at India’s rapid evolution from 5G to 6G infrastructure, claiming that India’s multi-format, multi-language content production makes it “by design” the most diverse content market in the world. And with every phone a potential broadcast station, Ambani’s thesis is that the creator economy isn’t a sub-sector of the entertainment industry anymore – it is the industry front and centre.
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Jayesh Shinde
Executive Editor at Digit. Technology journalist since Jan 2008, with stints at Indiatimes.com and PCWorld.in. Enthusiastic dad, reluctant traveler, weekend gamer, LOTR nerd, pseudo bon vivant. View Full Profile
