WAVES 2025 Reveals Finalists of Anti-Piracy Challenge at Jio Centre, Mumbai

The Challenge received a phenomenal response, with over 1,600 registrations and 132 detailed idea submissions from across India.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, has officially announced the seven finalists of the Anti-Piracy Challenge, a flagship initiative under the Create in India Challenge – Season 1 at the upcoming World Audio Visual & Entertainment Summit (WAVES) 2025, to be held from May 1–4, 2025, at the Jio World Centre, Mumbai.

Organized as a cornerstone event of WAVES 2025, the Anti-Piracy Challenge aims to accelerate the development and deployment of indigenous technologies that safeguard India's digital media ecosystem. The initiative, launched on September 12, 2024, has successfully brought together a diverse range of innovators, startups, and research institutions to tackle the mounting threat of digital piracy.

A Nationwide Innovation Movement

The Challenge received a phenomenal response, with over 1,600 registrations and 132 detailed idea submissions from across India. Participants included startups, academic researchers, independent technologists, and student innovators, showcasing a wealth of creative potential and technical expertise in addressing digital piracy.

After a thorough multi-stage evaluation process—which included technical screening, prototype validation, and live pitching—15 semi-finalists were shortlisted. Now, following rigorous scrutiny by a panel of eminent industry experts, 7 cutting-edge solutions have been selected as the top finalists. These solutions represent the most promising innovations in technologies such as digital fingerprinting, watermarking, blockchain-based rights tracking, and steganographic security.

Final Showdown at WAVES 2025

The final round will see the top 7 teams presenting their innovations live before a distinguished jury and an audience of media and tech industry leaders at the Grand Finale during WAVES 2025. The winners will be felicitated at the Summit, receiving national recognition, mentorship from top media-tech experts, and opportunities for collaboration with major industry players.

The Urgency Behind the Innovation

Digital piracy remains a growing threat in India’s rapidly expanding media and entertainment industry. A recent Media Partners Asia report estimates that 90 million users in India accessed pirated video content in 2024, leading to potential industry losses of USD 1.2 billion. Alarmingly, this figure could rise to 158 million users by 2029 without strategic interventions.

As online content consumption becomes ubiquitous, rights holders, broadcasters, and OTT platforms are turning to advanced technologies to safeguard intellectual property, prevent unauthorized distribution, and maintain content integrity. However, sophisticated piracy networks continue to evolve, often using encrypted channels and mirror sites to evade enforcement.

A National Call for Indigenous Tech Solutions

The Anti-Piracy Challenge is not just a competition—it is a strategic initiative designed to harness India's innovation capacity to build resilient, scalable, and indigenous anti-piracy tools. By focusing on frontier technologies such as:

• Digital Fingerprinting: To uniquely identify media files and trace unauthorized copies.

• Watermarking Solutions: Embedding covert and overt markers to track content misuse.

• Blockchain: For secure, decentralized content rights management.

• Steganography: Hiding copyright data within content to detect tampering.

The initiative sends a strong message about India’s commitment to protecting its digital intellectual property and encouraging Make in India innovation.

Strategic Industry Collaboration

The Challenge was organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and supported by leading industry partners including:

• IPHouse – Provided legal and IP strategy expertise

• Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – Played a pivotal role in technology validation and mentorship

• Hack2Skill – Powered the developer and startup outreach, hackathons, and idea incubations

These partners have been instrumental in guiding participants, facilitating technology evaluations, and building industry connections essential for the real-world application of the solutions.

Looking Ahead

The WAVES 2025 Summit promises to be a landmark event for India’s digital future, bringing together global thought leaders, policymakers, media houses, and tech innovators. The Anti-Piracy Challenge Grand Finale is set to be a highlight of the Summit, showcasing how technology can drive legal enforcement, content protection, and digital rights governance in the media and entertainment sector.

As India positions itself as a global content hub, initiatives like the Anti-Piracy Challenge represent a bold step toward self-reliant innovation, public-private collaboration, and sustainable content economics in a digital-first world.

Stay tuned as the nation celebrates its top 7 digital defenders in the fight against piracy—homegrown innovators who are turning the tide on unauthorized content distribution.