KOLKATA: Over the last few years, the media and entertainment industry has seen a number of major deals with the rapid change in the business. Some of the global merger and acquisition activities have impacted the Indian M&E sector too. Along with that, Indian media companies also witnessed big deals in the traditional broadcasting space as well as increased activity in the digital segment.

The experts were skeptical about deals in the space as the Covid2019 pandemic derailed the economy. However, the sector witnessed moderate activity in 2020 with 77 deals compared to 64 in 2019. However, overall deal value reduced to Rs 68 billion in 2020 from Rs 101 billion in 2019, the recently released FICCI-EY report revealed.

The decline in deal value has been attributed to the absence of big deals with only two deals crossing the $100 million threshold as compared to four such deals in 2019. But even before the pandemic, there were fewer high value deals in 2019 compared to earlier years. The overall deal value was significantly lower at Rs 101 billion as compared to Rs 192 billion in the previous year.

The lockdown during the pandemic boosted the uptake of digital media and gaming. Hence, these two segments together attracted 92 per cent of the investment in 2020. New media increased its share in terms of deal value from 37 per cent in 2019 to 92 per cent in 2020. Considerably, television saw the highest investment in 2019.

For instance, Dream11 raised $225 million from Tiger Global Management, TPG, ChrysCapital and Footpath Ventures. Dailyhunt got funding of $100 million from Google, Microsoft, Falcon Edge, Sofina and Lupa Systems.

Moreover, a number of Chinese apps like TikTok, PUBG were banned due to political tension amid India and China. As many of the banned apps were leaders in the space, the sudden vacuum created opportunity for local apps which got investors' backing to scale up their operations.

The audio streaming segment also saw a few important deals. While Reliance Industries bought a further 10.9 per cent stake in Saavn Media for Rs 6.5 billion from its erstwhile promoters, Gaana raised Rs 3.8 billion from Tencent and Times Internet.

On the other side, traditional media’s contribution to overall M&E deal value plummeted to eight per cent, compared to 63 per cent in 2019. There were primarily just three deals in the space including the Eros International-STX Filmworks merger, PVR’s rights issue and Inox’s fund raising via QIP, compared to 10 deals in 2019 including four marquee deals.

Private equity and venture capitalist firms led 70 per cent of the M&E deals in 2020, contributing to 79 per cent of the total funding received in the year. The share of deals led by strategic players fell to 27 per cent compared to 52 per cent in 2019.

The report forecasts more investments in scalable d2c business models, digital companies with a differentiated product offering, companies with strongholds in next-gen technologies in the next few years. Traditional advertising agencies and tech giants will both continue to invest in niche martech companies. Media entities under financial stress will also look at partnering with a larger strategic player.