The British Council, FICCI and Art X Company have jointly launched the third edition of the Taking the Temperature report, the first-ever of its kind which offers a quantitative mapping of India’s creative economy and culture sector – in the organised and unorganised sectors – across Advertising, literature, crafts, festivals, performing arts and other art forms.
As per their report, India’s creative economy had a recession of 39 percent which was reduced to Rs 30,440 crores GDP in 2021 from Rs 50,000 crores GDP in 2020, pre-Covid. 50% of creative sectors reported 51% or more loss in annual revenue in the financial year 2020-2021. 89% of creative sectors in TTT2 and 82% in TTT 3 have confirmed the pandemic impacted their income.
49 percent of creative sectors have not been able to keep creative businesses and artistic programmes running in the financial year 2020-2021. 94 percent of arts sectors are now operating in ‘digital only’ or ‘hybrid’ models
27 percent of the sector is generating income through digital platforms with only 8 per cent running physical programmes.
Advertising industry
- The advertisement industry which had a market size of Rs 7,000 crores saw a rise of 3.5 per cent in 2020-21. It includes advertisement revenues generated from digital and over-the-top (OTT) media, out-of-home, TV, films (in-cinema ads), and print. The Indian advertising market is among Asia’s fastest-growing advertisement markets after China. The increasing penetration of 5G internet and smartphones in the country is boosting the use of digital advertising, which is expected to pave the growth of the market in India. Moreover, the Olympic Games and the One Day International (ODI) cricket series in 2021 proved to be a major contributors to the growth of the overall market in the country.
- During Covid-19, advertisement spending saw an increase in the number of advertisers across sectors post-October 2020 (as compared to pre-Covid-19). However, Covid- 19 accelerated the shift to digital, so the share of digital advertising is expected to grow to 15 per cent – almost two years ahead of earlier projections. The recovery for this industry was led by an increase in the number of advertisers and the entry of new-to-TV advertisers (such as White Hat Jr Technologies and Practo).
- The Indian M&E sector fell by 24 percent to Rs 1.38 trillion; Historically, M&E as a sector grew and often outperformed India’s nominal GDP, the sector fell 3x times India’s nominal GDP fall of 8 per cent due to the discretionary nature of the spending. Subscription revenues, however, proved their mettle by holding up better than advertising revenues
Advertisement Market
- Filmed entertainment revenue includes revenues from Domestic theatricals, Overseas theatricals, Broadcast rights and Digital / OTT rights.
- Filmed entertainment segment does not include any revenues from food and beverage operations, parking revenues, retail revenues or any ticketing charges billed by online booking portals. Film gross box office is considered at the end customer price, for both domestic and international theatricals, the latter being impacted by exchange rate fluctuations
- Videos include online audio, news, social media and OTT platforms.
Jonathan Kennedy, Director Arts India, British Council, said, “Since the onset of Covid-19, we’ve dedicated our research to understand the impact of the pandemic on India’s creative and cultural economy with FICCI, Art X Company and Smart Cube. The final report makes practical recommendations for the short and long-term recovery of creative sectors and livelihoods. While our first two reports measured the impact of the pandemic on the incomes of the professionals and culture organisations, the third edition offers a definitive mapping of the scale and significance of the creative economy in India.”
“We hope recommendations for recovery of the creative economy will be implemented through governance, infrastructure development and India’s enduring self-reliance,” he added.
Rashmi Dhanwani, Founder-Director, The Art X Company said, “This final leg of the Taking the Temperature survey underscores the hard journey that the cultural sector in India has been on. Not only has the sector lost more than 50% of its income, but its performance has also affected India’s GDP growth. Besides the economic impact, the loss of lives and livelihoods that the pandemic has caused begs an urgent intervention – India’s culture sector needs a voice and demands urgent regulatory frameworks to safeguard this vital part of India’s identity.”
Sanjoy Roy Co-chair, Creative and Cultural Industries, FICCI said, “The TTT report on the Creative sector underlies the vital nature and impact of this sector and its potential in creating jobs, contributing to local economies and creating a platform to realise one full potential.”
