I recently paid a visit to India for the first time in five years, where we held a One Sony Meeting.

In attendance were senior management from Sony India, which is in charge of our electronics sales and marketing; the Media Networks business, which operates our TV channels and OTT services; the Entertainment businesses, including music and motion pictures; and the R&D Center. We had productive discussions regarding the unique business opportunities that India presents for each businesses, as well as what could realize through One Sony initiatives working in collaboration between Sony Group companies.

Alongside the One Sony Meeting participants
(click image to show names)

■ The Rapid Digitalization of the India Market and Infrastructure

One of the reasons behind holding this One Sony Meeting in India at this time relates to the rapid transformation of India's market.

As many of you may know, India's population is essentially on par with China's, and it is set to become the world's most populous country by 2025, with a projected 1.45 billion people. Aside from its size, this population is also remarkable for its youthfulness, with the average age being 28.

Additionally, India has been digitalizing rapidly under a mobile-first ecosystem. Out of its roughly 600 million internet users, approximately 96% of them are said to be mobile users. This again puts them in second place globally, behind only China.

Another factor contributing to the spread of mobile phones is the low cost of data. The cost of 1GB of data in India is the lowest in the world (approximately 1/30th the cost of Japan), making India a country that has the world's highest data usage rate per individual. It is said that this rapid mobile-first digitalization was driven by Reliance Jio, which operates a mobile communications business. Jio launched their service in 2016, and their aggressive pricing and bundling of the highly affordable Jio Phone with data fees caused what has become known as the "Jio Effect." In just two short years, between 2016 and 2018, data usage in India soared from 155th in the world to first place.

Taking advantage of the low data costs, people are using their phones to enjoy entertainment content. Bollywood music accounts for 50% of India's overall music market, and in India, music is often consumed visually. For that reason, YouTube is the undisputed leader when it comes to music services. After YouTube come local services such as Jio Saavn, Gaana, and Airtel Wynk, and these are followed by Spotify and Amazon Music. In the video entertainment domain, in addition to Amazon Prime and Netflix, there are a number of local OTT services vying for customer share, including HotStar, Zee5, Sony Liv, and Voot.

In addition to such rapid spread and adoption of the network infrastructure, the Indian government has also been rolling out a national identity number system known as Aadhaar, which is based on biometric data such as fingerprints and iris scans. More than 1.2 of India's 1.3 billion citizens have already enrolled to date. Thanks to the publishing of various SDKs and APIs, Aadhaar is used by existing systems, for example in the medical field, to enable personal identification and payments, and is also being actively employed in the development of new services.

In India, most services are bundled with cell phone usage fees or are based on advertising models, which means that enrollment in subscription-based services is still quite low. However, I believe that India now has the foundation mostly in place for people to enjoy digital content and to carry out trusted transactions.

■ Digital Entertainment and One Sony Growth Opportunities

Given this backdrop, India represents a tremendous growth opportunity, not only for Sony's electronics business, but especially in the digital entertainment domain, including films, music, and games.

Within India, in addition to our music and video content businesses, we also have a media networks business operated by Sony Pictures Network India (SPNI), a subsidiary of Sony Pictures. In particular, SPNI has built a strong market position around its 29 linear TV channels, which include highly popular sports channels, as well as the OTT service Sony Liv.

A Group photo with the SPNI management team.
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A visit to the SPNI Office including their content creation and channel distribution workspaces.
This picture shows the monitoring room for all SPNI channels.

India presents major growth opportunities for Sony on many fronts. In addition to the expansion of our existing global content business into the country, I see great potential in strengthening our capability to discover and develop local India-based artists and creators and supporting them to reach audiences across India and the rest of the world. And let us not forget that one of Sony's unique strengths is our ability to give creators and artists access to opportunities beyond a single genre, including music, film, TV, animation, games, and beyond.

This visit, my first in five years, gave me the chance to experience India's electrifying rate of development and eye-opening market potential firsthand. I look forward to exploring digital entertainment and One Sony growth opportunities including partnership strategies.