India’s next unicorns will not be applications but creators and artists: Shantanu Narayan, Chairman and Global CEO, Adobe
2025-05-01T15:03:00Z
India’s creative industry growth, AI empowerment, and potential for global leadership in ethical AI highlighted by Adobe CEO.
India’s next unicorns will not be applications but creators and artists, said Shantanu Narayan, Chairman and Global CEO, Adobe during the World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit on Thursday, pointing out that India’s freelance creator community has grown 10 per cent over the last decade.
According to Narayan, the creator industry is growing better than the small design studios community, with over 100 million content creators now in India.
Generative AI
“In India, it’s clear that generative AI is empowering creators to overcome the fear of the blank canvas by inspiring new ways of storytelling. Generative AI is enabling Indian creators to transcend traditional mediums, opening up opportunities across imaging, video and design,” he said. Regarding AI, Narayan said the technology is accelerating and expanding the creative aperture beyond ideation, creation and production.
Noting that 500 million Indians consume OTT content on their mobile phones, Narayan said the company has seen accelerated localisation and personalisation in content. Half of such content is now in regional languages.
Race of gaming
“Demand for short form and video content is surpassing supply and driven by the race of gaming in India, among other countries,” he said.
Narayan said that given the size and breadth of the creative opportunity that AI offers, India’s next growth may not be as a software tool economy but only in terms of creativity.
Local LLMs
“As an engineer and as a geek, I would be remiss not to call out India’s opportunity across the four layers of the AI. Data is clearly the underpinning of AI models and features by training models of Indian cultural, linguistic and historical data, we have an opportunity to create new forms of digital sovereignty. Models are the foundation and the important part of differentiation and a competitive advantage. While companies like Adobe, are also investing in models, local LLMs offer the opportunities to combine domain and AI ML expertise to build India specific models,” he said.
Narayan further said “AI will supercharge creativity, enable India to build on its leadership in mobile infrastructure and foster new business models by empowering both individuals and start-ups to rapidly prototype, test and scale innovative solutions. India’s global access to build teams globally and competitive products using LLMs, AI agents and local tools will give India’s vast outsourcing industry the opportunity to evolve and create new AI driven workflows as well as build AI natives.”
“India also has the opportunity to lead through ethical AI on the global stage. The Prime Minister earlier today talked about innovating responsibly and we believe that protecting intellectual property of the creators is an important differentiator for us,” he added.
Published on May 1, 2025
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