A decade ago, Indian television meant the living room, the cable box and a primetime soap opera. Today it means a smartphone, a connected TV or a computer, a password and a catalogue of original content spanning a dozen languages, fifty genres and several hundred million viewers. The transformation has been staggering in speed and scale – and it has produced, as all industries eventually do, its own awards night.
The fourth edition of indiantelevision.com’s Indian Telly Streaming Awards (ITSA 2026) takes place on 27 February in Mumbai, and it arrives at a moment when India’s OTT industry is no longer merely promising. It has delivered. The country now ranks among the world’s most hotly contested streaming markets, with global giants and scrappy domestic upstarts alike competing for the attention – and the subscription fees – of one of the planet’s most voracious audiences.
The ceremony, hosted by actors Nakuul Mehta and Mukti Mohan, will draw together the people who built that story and the platforms that bankrolled it. The confirmed guest list reads like a directory of India’s streaming establishment. Manoj Bajpayee, who has spent the better part of a decade reminding audiences what serious acting looks like, is expected. So are Huma Qureshi, Ali Fazal, Rasika Dugal, Ishaan Khatter, Abhishek Banerjee, Vineet Kumar Singh, Boman Irani, Soha Ali Khan, among others. Cultural phenomenon Munawar Faruqui, screenwriter Kanika Dhillon and a clutch of directors, producers and platform executives round out an attendance list that reflects just how wide India’s streaming tent has become.
Crucially, the senior leadership of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, SonyLIV, JioHotstar and ZEE5 are expected to be in the room. In an industry still sorting out the economics of original content – where subscriber acquisition costs are high, churn is stubborn and profitability remains elusive for many – the presence of platform chiefs at an awards night is not merely ceremonial. It is a statement about where the industry believes it is going.
The awards span a comprehensive range of categories, and the breadth is deliberate. Performance honours cover Best Actor in OTT Original Films and Series. Programming categories recognise Best Director and Best Writer. Business and marketing excellence gets its own moment. Fan Favourite and Editorial Choice awards acknowledge the gap between critical consensus and popular appetite – a gap that, in streaming, is often considerable.
Then there are the regional categories, and these may matter most of all. Dedicated honours for storytelling in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, Odia and Gujarati languages serve as a pointed reminder that India’s content revolution is not a Hindi-language affair conducted out of Mumbai. It is a genuinely multilingual explosion, one in which a Malayalam thriller or a Bengali crime drama can outperform a big-budget Hindi original on any given weekend. The platforms have learned this lesson, sometimes painfully. ITSA is codifying it.
The event draws support from a formidable roster of production houses and platforms. Abundantia Entertainment, Applause Entertainment, Balaji Telefilms, Hoichoi, Pocket Aces, Pritish Nandy Communications, Shemaroo Entertainment and Z5 are among the names associated with ITSA 2026 – a coalition that spans legacy Hindi cinema production, digital-native studios and regional content specialists. The diversity of that list is itself a measure of how the industry has evolved.
Waman Hari Pethe Jewellers comes aboard as Presenting Partner, lending the evening a touch of old Mumbai grandeur. DS Spice joins as Spice Partner. Neither association is incidental; awards nights in India have always been as much about the business relationships they cement as the trophies they distribute.
Behind ITSA sits the Indiantelevision.com Group, and behind the group sits a family that has spent the better part of four decades chronicling and shaping India’s television, content, cable TV, advertising and media and more recently the streaming industries.
Anil Wanvari, Founder and CEO, is a veteran who understood early that Indian television would need to find its place in a global conversation. He served as India’s representative at MIPCOM and MIPJunior in Cannes – the largest content markets where international content deals are made – and played an active role with the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He has hosted International Emmy semi-final judging rounds in India, helping place Indian talent on the world stage long before that became fashionable.
His daughter Prerna Wanvari, Executive Director of the group, brings an unusual dual perspective to the organisation. A working actor known for roles in 24 Season 2, Bandini, Parichay and Hum Rahe Na Rahe Hum, she represented India as a presenter at the 40th International Emmy Awards in New York in 2012. Today she co-leads the ITV Group, steering it through a period of profound transition while preserving the institutional credibility it has spent decades accumulating.
His Son Mishaal Wanvari is building out the group’s newer frontiers. As co-founder of Anime India, he is cultivating a fast-growing platform dedicated to India’s anime and AVGC – Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics – ecosystem. As Treasurer of MIDCCA, the Maharashtra Immersive and Digital Content Creators Association, he is working to position Maharashtra as a serious global player in AVGC-XR innovation, a sector that the Indian government has identified as a strategic priority.
India’s streaming wars are far from settled. The battle for subscribers is intensifying, the cost of premium content continues to climb, and the question of which platforms will still be standing – in their current form – five years hence remains genuinely open. Against that backdrop, an awards night might seem like a luxury.
It is not. In a market defined by noise, fragmentation and relentless competition, shared moments of recognition matter. They establish standards, celebrate craft and remind an industry that can sometimes seem obsessed with metrics and monetisation that the thing it is actually selling is stories. Good ones, told well, in the languages that people dream in.
ITSA 2026, on 27th February 2026, intends to honour exactly that.