‘That is India’s actual energy’: Mukesh Ambani hails India’s content material creators | Full Speech at WAVES 2025 Summit

On the inaugural World Audio Visible and Leisure Summit (WAVES) 2025 in Mumbai, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani delivered a stirring keynote that set the tone for India’s ambitions within the world leisure panorama. Chatting with an viewers of creators, innovators and trade leaders on the Jio World Centre, Ambani laid out a daring imaginative and prescient for India as the following world hub of storytelling, powered by its wealthy cultural heritage, youthful demography and digital infrastructure.

Addressing themes starting from synthetic intelligence to gentle energy, and from world collaboration to content-led development, Ambani emphasised the strategic and cultural alternative earlier than India. He referred to as on policymakers and trade leaders to assume globally, put money into rising applied sciences, and create significant, hopeful content material for a fractured world.

Beneath is the total textual content of his keynote handle at WAVES 2025:

“It’s a matter of nice honour, privilege and pleasure for me to be with all of you at this extraordinary gathering of creators, innovators, and visionaries of the leisure trade. My coronary heart is crammed with immense happiness as I communicate to you once more at this WAVES Summit.

All of us assembled on this grand corridor are united by a single perception: that tales created by the leisure fraternity can enrich human life and form a greater world. This summit is happening, most appropriately, on the Jio World Centre, a conference place that befits the ambition of a resurgent New India.

Mumbai is the leisure hub of India. The day shouldn’t be far when India will turn into the leisure hub of the world.

Due to this fact, the second is pioneering. The event is historic. Waves in Hindi known as ‘Tarang’.

इस तरंग मेंभविष्य के रंग हैं।
इस तरंग मेंभविष्य की उमंग हैं।

In WAVES 2025, we will see the attractive colors of tomorrow.
In WAVES 2025, we will see the intense hopes of the longer term.

We’re most grateful to Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji for inaugurating this summit this morning.
His speech has impressed all of us. His steerage has proven us the best way. His blessings are the wind in our sails as we embark on our daring voyage with enthusiasm and confidence. This summit marks the beginning of a protracted journey.

The start has been improbable and auspicious.

I’m assured that the WAVES summit will develop larger and higher in future ─ and turn into a must-attend annual occasion for the Who’s Who within the leisure trade globally.

Distinguished pals, The theme of my keynote is “Constructing the Subsequent International Leisure Revolution from India”. At the moment, I communicate not simply as an entrepreneur, however as a passionate believer within the energy of leisure — and within the limitless inventive spirit of India. Merchandise of the inventive industries equivalent to cinema, theatre, TV programmes, music, drama and literature are qualitatively completely different from different industries.

Different industries produce materials items and companies, that are after all important to primary human wants. However as soon as consumed, their lifespan is over. In distinction, merchandise of the inventive industries have a long-lasting impression, as a result of they contact our minds, hearts and soul. They impart with our feelings; They energise our ideas; They make us get pleasure from magnificence; They make us confront our previous and paint goals of a brighter future; They even awaken the core of our religious being. In brief, they illuminate the human drama in all colors and shades. The merchandise of the inventive industries have yet one more energy.

The most effective amongst them can effortlessly cross nationwide, social and cultural boundaries and discover a everlasting place within the hearts of individuals all over the world. That is how our films, film stars and singers have carried the flag of Indian tradition to all components of Asia, Africa, Europe and America. What number of of those world celebrities are current and concerned with WAVES.

Amitabh Bachchan ji, Shahrukh Khan, Rajnikanth, Gulzar Sahab, Hema Malini, and plenty of others. I respectfully salute all of them for his or her credible achievements. They’re India’s most influential Cultural Ambassadors. Some individuals name this “SOFT POWER”. However as I mentioned within the morning, that is India’s REAL POWER. As a result of the tradition and humanities have the ability to unite the world in a method nothing else can. They’re essentially the most valuable COMMON PUBLIC GOOD.

Excellencies and Buddies, we live in an period of International Media Renaissance when two tectonic shifts have modified the panorama of inventive industries globally. The primary is geo-economic and the opposite is technological. The financial energy of the International South, which accounts for about 85 per cent of the world’s inhabitants, is rising quickly.

This implies, many of the creation and consumption of media and leisure merchandise will now begin happening in Asia, Africa and South America. On a parallel monitor, Synthetic Intelligence and different digital applied sciences are proving to be much more disruptive for the inventive trade. These applied sciences are remodeling your complete worth chain from content material creation to distribution and monetisation.

AI instruments are dissolving the boundaries between dream and actuality, between creativeness and execution.
They’ll make good content material a thousand instances extra charming…and likewise take them concurrently to a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of screens in cinema halls, properties and on cellphones and computer systems throughout
geographies and languages.

What AI is doing to leisure now could be one million instances extra revolutionary than when silent digital camera and cinema was taking cinema to individuals 100 years in the past. On this fast-changing situation, India has nearly unbeatable benefits.

The primary is content material; the second is demography; and the third is expertise management. Let me elaborate on every of them. “Content material is King”. “Good Tales All the time Promote”. This unchanging precept defines the success of leisure merchandise ─ anyplace, in all places and at all times. For Indians, storytelling has been a lifestyle because the daybreak of our civilisation over 5,000 years in the past.

Our timeless epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, our mythologies, in addition to our classics in dozens of Indian languages, accommodates an ocean of tales. They contact each facet of life. They’ve romance, heroism, fantasy, tragedy, compassion, love for nature and timeless ethical values. Their attraction is common and eternal.

Why is that this so?

Mark Twain, the celebrated American author, famously answered this query by saying and I quote:
“India is the cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, mom of historical past, the grandmother of legend, and the nice grandmother of custom.”

Our second benefit is demography. India is now amongst the world’s most populous nation. Quickly, our economic system will turn into the third largest globally. This can doubtlessly make India the world’s largest media and leisure market.

Simply take a look at the numbers. 1.4 billion creators and shoppers, with a median age of 29. This isn’t only a statistic. It’s the profile of a demographic, financial and inventive superpower. India’s third benefit is expertise. India shouldn’t be following the technological revolution in media and leisure. India is definitely main it.

Indian VFX is now powering Hollywood blockbusters. We produce a number of million hours of content material yearly — movies, TV collection, music, sports activities, short-form, long-form, reside and immersive content material. We’re multilingual, multi-format, and multi-platform by design. And what’s our secret weapon?

It’s our world-class Digital Infrastructure, constructed on 5G, which is able to quickly be elevated to 6G. The 1.2 billion cellphones in India are doubtlessly 1.2 billion screens, on which customers can entry leisure ─ and even share user-generated content material. With all humility, I can say that Jio has made a number one contribution to
India’s digital and leisure revolution by making high-speed web reasonably priced and obtainable to all.

With JioCinema, we’ve damaged viewership information, revolutionised IPL streaming, and made immersive, multi-language, interactive sports activities viewing a worldwide commonplace. And that is just the start. Jio’s partnership with Disney marks the daybreak of a brand new period in digital storytelling. We’ve created JioHotstar with the ambition of equalling ─ even surpassing ─ the impression of main creators of leisure globally. It would present a platform for the most effective and the brightest expertise from India and overseas. Its expertise stack is unrivalled. In brief, JioHotstar is dedicated to creating India a proud chief within the world leisure trade.

Pricey pals, over the following 4 days, members on this summit will focus on weighty concepts and share their priceless views and experiences. Let me current my 4 motion factors to your consideration.
My first motion level is we should not miss this humungous alternative that’s beckoning all of us.
I want to repeat what I mentioned within the morning, as a result of it deserves restating.

India’s media and leisure trade immediately stands at $28 billion. We will simply develop this 5 instances ─ to over $100 billion ─ within the subsequent decade. This can give start to very large new alternatives in employment and entrepreneurship in various fields.

To attain this, India ought to put money into state-of-the-art content material clusters throughout India. India ought to practice tens of hundreds of our proficient younger individuals in animation, VFX, and different applied sciences. India ought to incentivise IP creation, AI-powered innovation and gamification.

India ought to have new funding avenues for this trade. And India ought to create an enabling, encouraging and empowering regulatory atmosphere that rewards creativeness and inclusion.

My second concept is that the most effective amongst our content material creators want to start out considering of the world as a market and begin creating content material for world audiences. We must always nurture even our regional creators to go world. A long time in the past, when expertise was not extremely superior, Raj Kapoor and different doyens of Indian cinema made movies that turned immensely in style in Russia, China, Central America and elsewhere.

Satyajit Ray mesmerised world audiences together with his black-and-white films. Richard Attenborough’s ‘Gandhi’ re-introduced Mahatma Gandhi to the western world. Lately, Aamir Khan’s Dangal, with a narrative set in rural Haryana, turned a blockbuster in China. Since sports activities can be a brand new style of leisure, IPL has now gained phenomenal viewership all over the world.

All this exhibits that the worldwide marketplace for India’s leisure and cultural merchandise will develop exponentially by leaps and bounds within the coming years and many years.

My third concept is that we should always forge partnerships and collaborations with modern entrepreneurs, artists and studios from all over the world.

The Prime Minister has given us this mandate: “India ought to turn into the trendy world centre for content material and creativity.”

My fourth concept pertains to the elemental goal of all inventive industries. I consider that the aim of all we do is to construct a greater world for our future generations. A extra harmonious world, a world that realises the motto that Prime Minister Modi gave to G20 in New Delhi. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam ─ The entire world is one household.

At the moment we live in a extremely polarised world. It is stuffed with turbulence and uncertainty. In consequence, individuals all around the globe are hungry for leisure that’s wholesome, healthful and brings hope and happiness.

India can fulfill this starvation higher than any nation on the earth. This isn’t simply an unprecedented financial and cultural alternative; It’s a strategic alternative. Due to this fact, I conclude my keynote by expressing one want from the underside of my coronary heart:

Could this newly created WAVES platform give the message of hope for a New World from a resurgent New India.

Thanks. And Jai Hind.”