Reels on sets: Assam to make its upcoming media city a creators’ hub to draw influencers

"It's a modular project. Rather than wait for it to be completely operational, we want to have a modular approach to get feedback of what parts are working and keep fine-tuning," said Tolia.

He added that the overall project will be spread in about 150 acres of which the first module will be in around 20 acres.

Bodhitree, primarily an entertainment content production company, has lately been focusing on building new film cities across the country, with its first project, the 1,000-acre Dharmaveer Media City to come up on 1,000 acres at an estimated investment of Rs 1,000 crore in Thane, Maharashtra.

Focus on new media

For its second such project, the one in Assam, the focus is all on new media.

"They (the Assam govt) had approached us about a year or eight months back, saying why don't you guys come and look at creating a film city kind of setup. We told them that it would be very difficult to attract a lot of mainstream shoots right now in Assam because there is only that much of an industry out there. But we feel that there is a huge potential to make it a creators' hub for the Northeast and encourage younger people to either become creators or the creators who are already there to get them better facilities in terms of training, more finesse in terms of shoots," Tolia said.

He estimates new media to be about a Rs 1 lakh crore business, and that it will keep growing.

According to a FICCI-EY report on the media entertainment industry titled Shape the Future, the Indian media and entertainment sector reached Rs 2.5 lakh crore in 2024 and new media, including digital media and online gaming, made up 41 percent of the sector’s revenues.

"The media city will be a place where influencers can make reels while at the same time, a filmmaker can make his films. We hope to create these decentralised facilities because now the next lot of creators don't have to be from Mumbai," Tolia said.

Apart from the normal sets for filming shoots, Assam's media city will include chroma or greenscreen setups. "Imagine something similar to Film City (in Mumbai) but in a much more compact manner allowing shooting for vertical content. Then there will be post (production) facilities, giving the right post-production tools to make content look good including reels and long formats. There will also be training available on new tools like AI, new-age editing, shooting. The media city will also act as a platform, connecting mainstream places like Mumbai, to help creators connect with local and national platforms and brands," Tolia said.

He also thinks that physical infrastructure is getting irrelevant with new technology coming in. In a few years it will be all greenscreens, he added.

While in early stages, AI adoption in content creation is changing the game, the Tolia said, adding that it was happening at a much faster pace than had been anticipated.

"We are already seeing ads being made in AI. Then there is some subtitling, dubbing, editing work where AI is being used, with people being able to make smaller videos out of bigger material. Post-production is going through a complete sea change. I think in two years' time a lot of the workflow will shift to AI. When it comes to pre-production, again I see a lot of action. There are a few IIT startups that I'm in touch with and a few other people who are finding a way to create a more effective workflow in pre-production. So we are thinking of storyboard creation, scripting, in terms of assistance in scripting, making everyone's jobs easier than what used to be a cumbersome process," he said.

Assam's advancements

The media city in Assam comes at a time when the state is attracting a lot of investments in different fields including Tata group's latest announcement of Rs 27,000-crore semiconductor investment. The government recently also said that the Northeast, which has been seen as the last frontier, has turned into the first frontier in the country.

"There is a huge impetus happening in that state towards all-round development which probably due to the militancy over the last couple of decades has been left out. The state is working in an overdrive to make up for that lost time, which is why there is that support being provided to entrepreneurs like us. It is not just the media sector but Tatas are coming up with this huge semiconductor play and a lot of people are coming into the state in a very big way. We are a part of the entire plan of Assam's development objective. What is interesting is it's very forward-looking, so most of the focus is on sunrise industries, like media, entertainment, semiconductors, which are still developing in India," Tolia said.

After Thane and Guwahati, Bodhitree is scouting for other places for a media city.

"We are speaking to Punjab and a few other places where we feel that the hubs can be created, because there are localised industries. The target is effectively places where there is a certain amount of local industry that can be boosted, and especially regional industry. I mean it just goes to say that 45 percent of all streaming content is going to be regional. So it is going to be a huge push and it's where most of the demand is," he said.

Tolia also pointed out that while the demand for content is massive with the country producing 2 lakh hours of content every year and Indians on an average spending 4.95 hours every day on mobile phones, India lacks the infrastructure to support content creation.

"In Mumbai, which is an entertainment hub, most of the studios have gone into real estate development from Kamal Haasan to RK Studios. There is a huge need gap for that kind of infrastructure," he said.