Instagram - Farhan Saeed
Islamabad: Pakistani singer-actor Farhan Saeed has sparked a fresh conversation after taking a sharp dig at Bollywood and comparing the Indian and Pakistani entertainment industries.
In a recent interview, Farhan said, “Bollywood mein bhi 100 mein se 2 film achi aati hai, ab toh mera khayal hai wo bhi nahi aati. Now they have gone towards propaganda films.” He further added that even on OTT, only a few Indian projects stand out, but praised the fact that India keeps making content consistently.
When the interviewer pointed out that India has bigger budgets, Farhan said the comparison itself is unfair because India has a population of around 1.5 billion while Pakistan has nearly 25 crore people. He said Pakistan has always been compared with a much larger “giant” and argued that if Pakistani films and dramas were released openly in India, the results would be different.
Farhan said, “Haan ek baar main challenge karta hoon, humari movies aur dramas khul ke release karne dein, phir dekhte hain. Hume bhi mile 1.5 billion log wala market. Unki movies yaha dekhi jati hain, humari waha lagti hi nahi.” But this is where the argument gets tricky.
Farhan’s point about India having a larger market is not wrong, but the idea that Bollywood automatically gets access to 1.5 billion people is far from reality. India is not one single Hindi-speaking audience waiting only for Bollywood films. The country has strong regional industries including Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Bhojpuri and Gujarati cinema, each catering to its own language, culture and audience.
In fact, Bollywood itself has been fighting for space in the last few years, with South Indian films repeatedly dominating national conversations and box office trends. For a huge part of India, Bollywood is not the first choice. It is just one industry among many.
So while Farhan may be right about Pakistan needing a bigger and more open market, reducing India’s entertainment advantage to “1.5 billion people” oversimplifies the picture. The Indian audience is massive, yes, but it is also divided by language, region, taste and industry. Not everyone in India watches Bollywood, and not every Indian film success belongs to Bollywood.
His statement has now opened up a wider debate: is Pakistan really competing with Bollywood, or with the much bigger and more complicated machine called Indian cinema?
This post was last modified on May 21, 2026 7:10 pm