BANGALORE: Asia's biggest entertainment industry show concluded in Mumbai last week with a clear message: Move over Information Technology, the Indian entertainment business is here. The industry has outperformed the national economy and is poised to grow from a Rs. 353-billion player to a Rs. 837 billion mammoth by 2010.

FICCI meet

`Frames 2006,' the seventh annual conference organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, unveiled the annual report card of the Indian entertainment and media industry, which was prepared by Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Radio turned out to be a runaway success story, all set to quadruple its business from Rs. 3 billion by 2010.

The cinema industry could look to double its current Rs. 68 billion take in the same period, with clear indications that digital technology, on the one hand, and new platforms such as mobile phones, on the other, might yet sharply transform the century-old delivery mechanisms.

There were strong pointers that Indian entertainment was going global in many new ways. Tom Freston, chief executive of the U.S.-based entertainment giant Viacom, said Paramount Pictures, one of its constituents, would move this year from mere exhibition of Hollywood films to co-producing Indian films for local and global markets.

It was a theme underlined further, when Tessa Jowell, U.K Minister for Culture, Media and Sports, said 10 joint Indo-U.K. film projects would be taken up in the very first year of the recently signed co-production treaty.

Ashok Amritraj, Hollywood producer, said his next feature would be an India-based production.

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