Prasar Bharati’s OTT platform, WAVES, is dreaming big, global, in fact. Less than a year after launch, with 3.8 million downloads under its belt, India’s public broadcaster now wants to take its homegrown streaming service to the world.
The plan sounds ambitious: global best practices, app-bundling deals, content syndication, and even international partnerships.
But here’s the hard truth, ambition isn’t the same as identity. WAVES may have the infrastructure, but it still lacks what truly makes an OTT platform stand out: a cultural fingerprint.
In a market where Netflix sells emotional storytelling, Prime Video sells convenience, and even JioHotstar sells mass appeal, WAVES doesn’t yet sell anything distinctly its own.
Its current catalogue leans heavily on Doordarshan nostalgia and All India Radio archives, heritage content that has value, yes, but not necessarily global resonance. You can’t enter the streaming battlefield armed only with vintage memories.
Prasar Bharati’s idea to study “global best practices” is a start, but imitation without differentiation is a trap. The world doesn’t need another Netflix; it needs something unmistakably Indian yet globally fluent, the kind of storytelling that blends authenticity with modernity.
If WAVES can translate the depth of Indian regional voices into world-class storytelling, it could become India’s cultural export rather than another bureaucratic experiment.
But if it gets lost in committee-led strategies and consultant jargon, this “global expansion” will remain what so many public projects in India become, a well-written plan that never really takes off.