The biggest tech trends of 2025 and how they will shape India’s Media and Entertainment sector in 2026
- By Khushboo Mulani,Founder & ShEO, Slay Media
The media and entertainment industry in India in 2025 bears witness to one indisputable fact: technology is no longer an enabler. It has become the ecosystem. From my own experience running a creative agency, where I closely work with brands, creators, and platforms, I have observed that storytelling is as much an output of algorithmic data today as it is of imagination.
Bringing to the discussion, the biggest tech trends redefining M&E in India this year, and what this means for agencies like ours.
1. Generative AI Moves from Experiment to Infrastructure
Generative AI is a far cry from being a nice-to-have option for creative teams. Generative AI is quickly becoming integrated into the everyday workflow. It compresses the production pipeline tremendously, affecting everything from scripting, brainstorming, and editing, right through subtitling and image generation.
Days where weeks were spent are now numbered as client expectations have changed. Speed is assumed. Iterations: unlimited. But, speed is only one of the variables going through sea change, the other being scale- brands can now create so many versions of content across formats, platforms, and languages without huge costs being involved.
This brings forth a new creative challenge. The question is no longer how to make content-ish faster but how to make it meaningful once all have access to the same tool. Taste, strategy, and cultural context are the real differentiators.
2. Hyper-Personalisation Is the New Creative Brief
India's diversity demands accuracy. In 2025, anything broad fails fast. By using AI, insights into the audience allow content to be personalised by language, region, behaviour, and even mood.
From OTTs, digital advertisers to social media campaigns, the trend is increasingly towards micro-community versus mass-market. The same campaign now exists in multiple creative realities.
And therefore, for agencies, planning has been turned upside down. Creativity must be modular. The narrative must change whilst doing justice to the brand voice. With data becoming an empowered currency for creative teams, those who understand analytics and aesthetics are winning.
3. Immersive Tech Becomes Brand-Relevant
AR and VR exited the limelight some while ago. By the year 2025, immersive formats have found relevance for product launches, fan engagement, virtual concerts, interactive ads, and experiential storytelling.
Brands are experimenting extensively with AR filters, 3D product experiences, and virtual brand worlds, while full-blown metaverse adoption continues to evolve. Added to this list, with purpose, is time well-spent, recall, and emotional engagement.
The real opportunity lies in integration, not frittering away options. Immersive technologies work best when creating leverage for storytelling, not diluting it.
4. Regional Content Is The Engine Of Growth
The most distinct forthcoming wave of audience growth is indeed regional. Technology, enabling speedier dubbing, AI-led localisation, and culturally relevant distribution, has aided this.
Regional storytelling is no longer limited to regional walls. It is now driving national and international viewership. For agencies, this means developing deeper cultural intelligence, as opposed to a mere translation.
The brands that survive are those that listen to regional nuance but are strategically consistent. In 2025, we say that authenticity is the currency of reach.
5. The Creator Economy Becomes Structured
The beginning of 2025 marked a time of great maturation in India's creator ecosystem. Today, short-form creators, niche educators, and community-driven influencers are a part of India's pop culture, whereas in the past, traditional celebrities were the sole creators of such culture. With better monetisation tools from the platform's side and with serious budgets allocated from the brands' side, creators are now evolving as media businesses. Agencies are moving from transactional influencer sourcing to fostering long-term creator partnerships and creating IP with them.
Creators are no longer mere distribution channels. They have become collaborators, storytellers, and strategists.
6. Data and Predictive Analytics Drive Decisions
In 2025, the creative instinct gets reinforcement through predictive intelligence, and by 2026, this evolves into a deeply embedded decision-making layer. More and more, data drives media planning, timing, content selection, and performance revision. AI tools help forecast trends, behaviours of audiences, and expectations regarding campaign outcomes long before launching. This minimised wastage and brought accountability across the ecosystem.
The teams of tomorrow will know how to transform data into a creative direction, not simple reports.
Closing Thought
The media and entertainment industry in India has crossed over the lines of creativity and computation in 2025 and this evolution will only accelerate in 2026. Life has been competitive in many ways, but technology is steadily knocking down walls, speeding up production, and opening up many more avenues. At the same time, it has built up a rising wait list of expectations.
Agencies will be less vendors and more culture shapers. The tools will change. The platforms will change. What will remain constant is the need for a razor-sharp mind, storytelling capability, and deep insight into people.
That's where real creative leadership starts.
