A funny moment occurred barely three minutes in when actress Neena Gupta asked: “Ye heartland kaun bolta hai?” Moderator Anuradha Sengupta pointed out that their 2025 FICCI FRAMES firechat chat is titled "Local Roots, Global Reach: Indian Storytelling from the Heartland." She had, just a few minutes ago, kicked things off honestly: "I am a second-generation Mumbaikar, I have no idea of the heartland." But Neena Gupta’s following line should have sealed shut the debate about heartland: “Jo heart se banti hai, wo heartland?” – What is made from the heart, is the heartland.
The collection of some of India’s most beloved storytellers had begun with a collective “you first” energy. Vijay Koshy, President of The Viral Fever (TVF), began with the wisdom that comes from creating shows set in a rural village in India, which have travelled across the world.
"Anything can be the heartland," Koshy said, essentially throwing geography out the window. "It's not necessarily that it has to be a village or it has to be a tier two, tier three. I can relate to a dangal in a Punjab village, or I can relate to another story based on an urban setting. The story has to be relatable."
Pratik Gandhi gave an answer that had the audience clapping: "Anything that comes from the land of your heart, will touch the heart. And that's what we have seen in the last few years, especially". So, in essence, it is not about geography: the heartland is where the heart is.
Koshy, representing the only panelist who, in his own words, deals with "platforms and brands and all that," dropped some gyan about how streaming platforms have become the new-age Michelangelos of content patronage. His comparison was apt and urgent: "Michelangelo wouldn't have been able to do the Sistine Chapel if somebody had not sponsored him." The difference today? These digital patrons have their own agendas: advertising, stickiness for their shopping platform, a tech company masquerading as an entertainment platform, etc.
Yet, Koshy admits that this business-meets-art dynamic has created something unique in the Indian entertainment space. While traditional TV was "driven by advertising revenues" and "chasing housewives 30 plus," streamers, in a sense, democratized storytelling. This led to shows like Panchayat, which every platform initially rejected with the question, "Who wants to watch a show about a village where nothing is happening?" And now, the actors of that show have become stars in their own right.
Panchayat’s beloved Prahlad Chacha, played by Faisal Malik, brought some fascinating observations about the show’s unexpected success when he said that: "With Panchayat, even we didn't know that India was looking for such a simple story.”
The numbers back up this sentiment spectacularly. Recent data shows that Panchayat Season 4 achieved record-breaking success, trending in over 40 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and the UAE. It was streamed in over 180 countries worldwide and became Prime Video's biggest opening in franchise history. It thus proved that authentic, small-town narratives rooted in local dialects, humour and social dynamics could also captivate global audiences without sacrificing their local essence.
Malik reminded everyone of classics like Mother India and Guide to emphasise that this “heartland” content isn't a new phenomenon, but that India has always appreciated stories rooted in its cultural soil. What is new, however, is the platform and reach of the stories now streaming from Trombay to Timbaktu, whereas they once only played in single-screen theatres.
Actor Vineet Kumar Singh invoked India's national anthem to make his point about the richness of our regional storytelling. "Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha, Dravid, Utkal, Banga, Vindhya, Himachal, Yamuna, Ganga," he recited, adding that these aren't just geographical markers but places where music, dance, food, language, and culture were born and thrive. Hence, his advice: “Don't follow what's trending... follow where you come from.” This idea seems to have been proven commercially sound, as regional cinema now accounts for a stunning 54% of OTT content, up from 27% in 2020.
Singh's example of Rabindranath Tagore writing Gitanjali in Bengali before it went global from his own translation in English, underlined the panel's overall message, which he put as: "Jo jitna rooted aur authentic ho, utna uska universal reach ho sakta hai" (The more rooted and authentic something is, the more universal reach it can have). The local is global, they used to say? Touche.
Not everything was rosy in this heartland paradise. Pratik Gandhi is concerned about the industry's increasing dependence on data-driven decisions. "Earlier, the starting point for making films was the story; now the starting point for green-lighting films is data.”
This critique points to what I call the Achilles' heels of our modern entertainment machine. It is true that AI and big data analytics revolutionised creation, with platforms like Netflix leveraging sophisticated algorithmic predictions to judge audience tastes. But today, there has been a growing consensus that algorithmic decision-making is stifling creative risk-taking.
And Gandhi’s next point highlighted what he meant when he said that, “This is an industry where the formula comes after the success, not before it,” meaning that the very authenticity that makes heartland content successful can't be algorithmically replicated.
Singh discussed the film he acted in, Superboys of Malegaon, a movie about amateur filmmakers from a small Maharashtra town. His description of the Toronto International Film Festival audience's reaction: “the applause started and just wouldn't stop” showed something profound about storytelling ability to touch hearts – from Malegaon to Toronto.
The film, which tells the real story of Nasir Shaikh and his friends who created their own film industry in Malegaon, embodies everything the panel was discussing: authentic, rooted stories resonate globally precisely because they're so locally specific, not because they were chasing some obscure algorithmic glory.
Neena Gupta, however, brought a dose of industry reality when she talked of how "successful film producers" entered OTT to displace smaller creators who had the vision to make the likes of Panchayat. This was a silent nod to a major tension in the industry, where streaming’s promise of democratisation is being tested by traditional power structures now rushing forward to reassert themselves in digital spaces.
Interestingly, OTT platforms invested over ₹13,000 crore in original content in 2023-24. Which is good. But like sugar attracting flies, this is not only attracting everyone, but the strain on return on investment means the focus will be back on advertising revenue models that could push platforms to more mainstream, “algorithm-friendly” content.
And yet, in the end, the discussion did pivot back to what had become the central theme: authenticity over everything else. Koshy's outline of Panchayat’s journey from being rejected by multiple platforms to becoming India’s most loved show served as the right reminder for the heartland's journey from the margins to the mainstream. And if you look, you'll see that the numbers corroborate his point: For Amazon Prime, Indian content featured in the top 10 of global streaming platforms every week of 2024, with 25% of viewership coming from international audiences. Indian entertainment on streaming is no longer about market expansion; it is slowly becoming India’s soft power.
Faisal Malik joined Vineet in pleading for films like Superboys of Malegaon to get better box office success. It became a reminder that, despite critical acclaim and festival success, most authentic heartland stories still struggle at the box office. This problem has been solved partly by streaming platforms.
The discussion also revealed another fundamental irony: in the age of big data and predictive analytics, the most successful shows globally have often come from the most unpredictable places. Panchayat -- a show about a village "where nothing happens" -- wasn’t supposed to work. Same with Squid Game that took 13 years to make cause no one saw the vision, or the Spanish show Money Heist. Each of these three, among many others globally, defied every algorithmic prediction about viewer preferences.
This clearly tells us that no matter how well algorithms master recommendations and distribution, they still can’t predict which stories will resonate with the audience or become cultural milestones. The heart, obviously, has mysteries algorithms just can’t decode.
Much like Korea’s “K-wave”, Indian stories rooted in our soil are finding wings worldwide. Like our glocal chicken tikka or tandoori rotis, the local flavour of our content is creating international impact. If anything, this is proof that the real heartland isn't a place on a map: it is everywhere stories are told with genuine heart.
Home is where the heartland is – and the heartland, from Phulera to Paris - is anywhere stories matter.
