As per the estimates in the 12th edition of the annual report, the M&E industry will end FY21 with total revenues of Rs 1.40 lakh crore compared to Rs 1.75 lakh crore in the previous fiscal.

The report titled ‘A Year Off Script: Time for Resilience’ said that verticals which will see the biggest decline include films (-67%), animation, VFX and post production (-51%), radio (-50%), out-of-home (-49%) and print (-38%). The only sectors, which will manage to buck the trend include digital and OTT (+17%) and gaming (+10%) due to higher consumption during lockdown.

“This is the first study on overall impact of Covid-19 on the M&E sector and we have only taken a two-year horizon, rather than usual five years, due to so much uncertainty in the market,” Girish Menon, partner and head, M&E, KPMG, told ET.

Menon said even before the outbreak of the pandemic, India was experiencing a slowdown in economic activity and onset of Covid-19 accentuated the severity of the blow to the Indian economy.

However, all is not lost as the industry is expected to bounce back to pre-Covid levels by FY22 with 33% growth over FY21.

One of the major predictions in the report is that the pandemic will accelerate the spread of digital advertising taking over other sectors in FY21 itself, as against the earlier forecast of 2024.

“Globally, digital advertising has already surpassed other media, but in India, TV was the largest advertising media. It will change this fiscal,” said Menon.

As per the report, the film sector could take the longest time to recover as there’s bound to be a supply issue when they open.

“We will see a lot of tech integration happening in the media and entertainment. It will be traditional-cum-digital as you cannot think of digital as a separate business anymore,” Menon said.