India is home to the world’s largest film industry by number of films produced. Its output comes from a multilingual national cinema rather than from Bollywood alone, with major industries making films in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali and other languages.
The industry’s roots reach back to Dadasaheb Phalke’s Raja Harishchandra, released in 1913 and widely regarded as India’s first full-length feature film. Hindi cinema based in Mumbai became internationally famous as Bollywood, but it is only one part of India’s broader production system. Hyderabad’s Telugu-language cinema, Chennai’s Tamil cinema and several other regional industries contribute hundreds of films each year.
People often confuse the world’s biggest film industry by production volume with the most commercially profitable or globally dominant one. Those are different measures. India’s lead is based on the number of films made, while Hollywood has historically had greater international distribution and revenue in many markets. Film counts can vary by year and by whether independently produced and digitally certified films are included.