Reliance Industries (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani, speaking at the World Audio Visual Entertainment Summit (WAVES) on Thursday (May 1), delved upon a host of issues -- from artificial intelligence to India's growing soft power.
Here's is the full text of his address:
It is a matter of great honour, privilege and pleasure for me to be with all of you at this extraordinary gathering of creators, innovators, and visionaries of the entertainment industry.
My heart is filled with immense happiness as I speak to you again at this WAVES Summit.
All of us assembled in this grand hall are united by a single belief: that stories created by the entertainment fraternity can enrich human life and shape a better world.
This summit is taking place, most appropriately, at the Jio World Centre, a convention place that befits the ambition of a resurgent New India.
Mumbai is the entertainment hub of India.
The day is not far when India will become the entertainment hub of the world.
Therefore, the moment is pioneering.
The occasion is historic.
Waves in Hindi is called ‘Tarang’.
इस तरंग में भविष्य के रंग हैं।
इस तरंग में भविष्य की उमंग हैं।
In WAVES 2025, we can see the beautiful colours of tomorrow.
In WAVES 2025, we can see the bright hopes of the future.
We are most grateful to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji for inaugurating this summit this morning.
His speech has inspired all of us.
His guidance has shown us the way.
His blessings are the wind in our sails as we embark on our bold voyage with enthusiasm and confidence.
This summit marks the start of a long journey.
The beginning has been fantastic and auspicious.
I am confident that the WAVES summit will grow bigger and better in future ─ and become a must-attend annual event for the Who’s Who in the entertainment industry globally.
Distinguished friends,
The theme of my keynote is “Building the Next Global Entertainment Revolution from India”.
Today, I speak not just as an entrepreneur, but as a passionate believer in the power of entertainment — and in the limitless creative spirit of India.
Products of the creative industries such as cinema, theatre, TV programmes, music, drama and literature are qualitatively different from other industries.
Other industries produce material goods and services, which are of course essential to basic human needs.
But once consumed, their lifespan is over.
In contrast, products of the creative industries have a long-lasting impact, because they touch our minds, hearts and soul.
They communicate with our emotions;
They energise our thoughts;
They make us enjoy beauty;
They make us confront our past and paint dreams of a brighter future;
They even awaken the core of our spiritual being.
In short, they illuminate the human drama in all colours and shades.
The products of the creative industries have yet another power.
The best among them can effortlessly cross national, social and cultural boundaries and find a permanent place in the hearts of people around the world.
This is how our movies, movie stars and singers have carried the flag of Indian culture to all parts of Asia, Africa, Europe and America.
How many of these global celebrities are present and involved with WAVES.
Amitabh Bachchan ji, Shahrukh Khan, Rajnikanth, Gulzar Sahab, Hema Malini, and many others.
I respectfully salute all of them for their credible achievements.
They are India’s most influential Cultural Ambassadors.
Some people call this “SOFT POWER”.
But as I said in the morning, this is India’s REAL POWER.
Because the culture and arts have the power to unite the world in a way nothing else can.
They are the most precious COMMON PUBLIC GOOD.
Excellencies and Friends,
We are living in an era of Global Media Renaissance when two tectonic shifts have changed the landscape of creative industries globally.
The first is geo-economic and the other is technological.
The economic power of the Global South, which accounts for about 85% of the world’s population, is rising rapidly.
This means, most of the creation and consumption of media and entertainment products will now start taking place in Asia, Africa and South America.
On a parallel track, Artificial Intelligence and other digital technologies are proving to be even more disruptive for the creative industry.
These technologies are transforming the entire value chain from content creation to distribution and monetisation.
AI tools are dissolving the barriers between dream and reality, between imagination and execution.
They can make good content a thousand times more captivating…
and also take them simultaneously to hundreds of millions of screens in cinema halls, homes and on mobile phones and computers across geographies and languages.
What AI is doing to entertainment now is a million times more revolutionary than when silent camera and cinema was taking cinema to people a hundred years ago.
In this fast-changing scenario, India has almost unbeatable advantages.
The first is content; the second is demography; and the third is technology leadership.
Let me elaborate on each of them.
“Content is King”. “Good Stories Always Sell”.
This unchanging principle defines the success of entertainment products ─ anywhere, everywhere and always.
For Indians, storytelling has been a way of life since the dawn of our civilisation over 5,000 years ago.
Our timeless epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, our mythologies, as well as our classics in dozens of Indian languages, contains an ocean of stories.
They touch every aspect of life.
They have romance, heroism, fantasy, tragedy, compassion, love for nature and timeless moral values.
Their appeal is universal and everlasting.
Why is this so?
Mark Twain, the celebrated American writer, famously answered this question by saying and I quote:
“India is the cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition.”
Our second advantage is demography.
India is now amongst the world’s most populous nation.
Soon, our economy will become the third largest globally.
This will potentially make India the world’s largest media and entertainment market.
Just look at the numbers.
1.4 billion creators and consumers, with an average age of 29.
This is not just a statistic.
It is the profile of a demographic, economic and creative superpower.
India’s third advantage is technology.
India is not following the technological revolution in media and entertainment. India is actually leading it.
Indian VFX is now powering Hollywood blockbusters.
We produce several million hours of content every year — films, TV series, music, sports, short-form, long-form, live and immersive content.
We are multilingual, multi-format, and multi-platform by design.
And what is our secret weapon?
It is our world-class Digital Infrastructure, built on 5G, which will soon be elevated to 6G.
The 1.2 billion mobile phones in India are potentially 1.2 billion screens, on which users can access entertainment ─ and even share user-generated content.
With all humility, I can say that Jio has made a leading contribution to India’s digital and entertainment revolution by making high-speed internet affordable and available to all.
With JioCinema, we have broken viewership records, revolutionized IPL streaming, and made immersive, multi-language, interactive sports viewing a global standard.
And this is just the beginning.
Jio’s partnership with Disney marks the dawn of a new era in digital storytelling.
We have created JioHotstar with the ambition of equalling ─ even surpassing ─ the impact of leading creators of entertainment globally.
It will provide a platform for the best and the brightest talent from India and abroad.
Its technology stack is unrivalled.
In short, JioHotstar is committed to making India a proud leader in the global entertainment industry.
Dear friends,
Over the next four days, participants in this summit will discuss weighty ideas and share their valuable perspectives and experiences.
Let me present my four action points for your consideration.
My first action point is we must not miss this humungous opportunity that is beckoning all of us.
I would like to repeat what I said in the morning, because it merits restating.
India’s media and entertainment industry today stands at $28 billion.
We can easily grow this five times ─ to over $100 billion ─ in the next decade.
This will give birth to huge new opportunities in employment and entrepreneurship in diverse fields.
To achieve this, India should invest in state-of-the-art content clusters across India.
India should train tens of thousands of our talented young people in animation, VFX, and other technologies.
India should incentivize IP creation, AI-powered innovation and gamification.
India should have new investment avenues for this industry.
And India should create an enabling, encouraging and empowering regulatory environment that rewards imagination and inclusion.
My second idea is that the best among our content creators need to start thinking of the world as a market and start creating content for global audiences.
We should nurture even our regional creators to go global.
Decades ago, when technology was not highly advanced, Raj Kapoor and other doyens of Indian cinema made films that became immensely popular in Russia, China, Central America and elsewhere.
Satyajit Ray mesmerised global audiences with his black-and-white movies.
Richard Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’ re-introduced Mahatma Gandhi to the western world.
In recent years, Aamir Khan’s Dangal, with a story set in rural Haryana, became a blockbuster in China.
Since sports is also a new genre of entertainment, IPL has now gained phenomenal viewership around the world.
All this shows that the global market for India’s entertainment and cultural products will grow exponentially by leaps and bounds in the coming years and decades.
My third idea is that we should forge partnerships and collaborations with innovative entrepreneurs, artists and studios from around the world.
The Prime Minister has given us this mandate:
“India should become the modern global centre for content and creativity.”
My fourth idea relates to the fundamental purpose of all creative industries.
I believe that the purpose of all we do is to build a better world for our future generations.
A more harmonious world, a world that realises the motto that Prime Minister Modi gave to G20 in New Delhi.
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam ─ The whole world is one family.
Today we are living in a highly polarised world.
It is full of turbulence and uncertainty.
As a result, people all over the globe are hungry for entertainment that is healthy, wholesome and brings hope and happiness.
India can satisfy this hunger better than any country in the world.
This is not just an unprecedented economic and cultural opportunity;
It is a strategic opportunity.
Therefore, I conclude my keynote by expressing one wish from the bottom of my heart:
May this newly created WAVES platform give the message of hope for a New World from a resurgent New India.
Thank you. And Jai Hind.
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