Prime Video’s Gaurav Gandhi was honoured at the CII Big Picture Summit

At the recently concluded 2025 CII Big Picture Summit, Prime Video APAC vice president Gaurav Gandhi was recognised as a “Visionary Shaping India’s Media & Entertainment Future”. He was felicitated by CII National Council on M&E chairman and JetSynthesys CEO and managing director Rajan Navani who also moderated the specially curated session. Gandhi was honoured for his leadership in expanding streaming access across the Asia Pacific region, pioneering innovative content strategies and advancing India’s position in the global media ecosystem. The felicitation took place during the summit’s valedictory session.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Gandhi spoke about the vision that has shaped his journey in the industry. He said, “Every experience you go through, successful or not, shapes what you are going to do in the future. And if you learn from it, you get a sense of what the world could be. And I think oftentimes, to really change the world, you have to imagine what it could be and not just take it as it is. This mindset guided many of the foundational decisions I took when streaming was still at a very nascent stage in the country.”

He also spoke about the power of stories to transcend boundaries, noting that cultural resonance always begins at home. Stories have to connect locally first before they can travel globally. If something doesn’t move its local audience, it rarely becomes world-renowned. We don’t think about designing a story to be global; at Prime Video, we think about telling a truly great story and when that connection is authentic, the world follows.

He added that this belief is already playing out meaningfully on Prime Video, where over 25 per cent of viewership for Indian content now comes from outside India demonstrating how deeply local stories can inspire global audiences.

He also spoke about the importance of intention and execution in shaping a differentiated content ecosystem. He emphasised that while localisation through subtitles and dubbing has helped, building nuanced storytelling requires characters who resonate universally. This is where intentional casting choices played a key role. Talent crossovers, such as Shahid Kapoor and Vijay Sethupathi in Farzi, or Manoj Bajpayee and Samantha Ruth Prabhu in The Family Man season two, were examples of intentional decisions that, when executed well, helped create deeper connections with a wider set of audience.

On leadership, he emphasised curiosity as the single most essential quality in a rapidly evolving industry. In response to Navani’s question on what goes into building a strong, effective team, he shared, “I hire the best team and let them do their job. The best thing one can do as a leader, is to create more leaders. An important quality in leadership is knowing when to step in and support your team, and when to give them the space to experiment and do their own thing.”

He concluded by underscoring the importance of learning from people at every level of an organisation.