Discovery India MD Megha Tata is a media industry veteran and when she airs her views, people listen with attention— even if they are just musings.

So, when Tata opines that “discovering right talent among India’s 400 million enthusiastic millennials would be a success enabler for media in 2022”, she is bang on target.

In a LinkedIn post, titled ‘New Year Musings’, Tata has outlined some media trends that would be seen in India, which, according to her, is at the “convergence of the booming global OTT ecosystem”.

And, she should know something about talent and trends. After all, Discovery Inc. chose to roll out — some say actually incubated it — its streaming product discovery+ in India over a year before introducing it globally. Helming the experiment in India was Tata, along with a band of ace pros like digital head Issac John.

A report from S&P Global in March 2020 had said, “Discovery Inc.’s new streaming video app for India may face a tough time cracking the overcrowded over-the-top market, despite the company’s effort to distinguish itself with unscripted programming.” But, today, discovery+ is doing well in India and proved to be exciting enough for the parent company to roll out the service globally in 2021.

“Storytelling will continue to be the key driver in getting and keeping the subscribers (in 2022)”, Tata said in her musings, justifying her assertions by giving examples of streaming successes ‘Scam 1992’ (SonyLIV) and documentary ‘Money Mafia’ that streamed on discovery+ — both “creative stories with emerging new talent”.

Pointing out that “originals are the secret sauce” for success, Tata puns on the abnormality of the COVID-19 pandemic by saying, “Rise in popularity of Original Content was OTT’s new normal in 2021.”

Quoting from industry reports that 88 percent of India’s Internet users use OTT platforms at least once a week, spending 50 percent of watch time on local content, she predicts that though access to global content is an integral part of the OTT offerings, the “dial will move with local originals, both in fiction and real life entertainment”.

That Tata is a keen follower of global trends and developments comes out in her observations in the category ‘Breaking Language & Regional Barriers’.

“When the Korean film ‘Parasite’won (the) Best Picture Oscar in Jan ’20, director Bon Joon Ho had said, ‘Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.’ ‘Squid Games’ and ‘Money Heist’ (both runaway global successes for Netflix) only reiterated that! Here is hoping that there is one show from India that can break the language barrier to become a global success!” Tata fervently hoped, adding that the pace at which “our industry is adapting to these trends, I am super excited for 2022!” Amen!

For the record, in a year-ender observation in Campaign India magazine, Tata, who’s held leadership positions in Star India and HBO South Asia earlier, Tata has been quoted as saying, “An outrageous prediction for 2022?  The hunger for good content will continue to drive the market, leading to several experimentation, diversification of business models and, maybe, will also start driving consolidation. Overall, I believe that linear and digital will continue to expand in parallel continuing the ‘and’ rather than ‘either/or’ scenario. So, TV and digital will grow and content will glow!”