The Digitisation of Bollywood : Adapting to Disruptive Innovation

This article explores the impact of digitisation on the Indian film industry clustered around the metropolis of Mumbai known as Bollywood. It seeks to examine the opportunities and challenges posed by the digital and Internet revolution and how industry players exploit these opportunities and surmount the challenges. The ideas presented in the article were first developed through discussions with Bollywood executives and media researchers based in Mumbai. Extensive secondary research of related academic and trade publications was then carried out for corroboration and validation. Three test cases of leading players in the Bollywood digital media-space are presented to corroborate the analysis. The article concludes that the challenges confronting Bollywood are a result of disruptions brought on by digitisation: its impact on key stakeholders in the value chain, the moves made by these stakeholders to exploit digitisation, the resultant pressure on other players in the value chain, and finally, the changes that affect existing business models. The article hence attempts to provide a snapshot of the sweeping changes transforming Bollywood as it embraces the disruptive innovation of digitisation