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| Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: The South Indian dilemma | | At Ficci Chennai, it was clear that the rest of India wants to do business with the South. |
| Vanita Kohli-Khandekar / New Delhi Nov 24, 2009, 00:18 IST |
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The huge presence of media firms, from Mumbai and Delhi, i-bankers and PEs at the Ficci Chennai conference was the clearest indicator that the rest of India wants to do business with the South.
Last week saw Ficci’s first Media and Entertainment (M&E) conclave in Chennai. For almost a decade now, Ficci has been holding FRAMEs, a “global convention” for the M&E business in India. Why then a separate one for South India? Because the participation of South Indian media companies in the FRAMEs held annually in Mumbai is usually not so good, say Ficci sources.
Was this another manifestation then of media companies in the South being aloof and difficult to meet.
There are several examples of this, some that I have experienced, others that people within the industry have. For instance, twice, I have landed in Hyderabad and got a call from (Eenadu’s) Ramoji Rao’s office saying that my meeting with him, fixed weeks in advance, is cancelled. Meeting Kalanithi Maran is equally difficult. It takes several e-mails, faxes and half-a-dozen calls to get through to the secretary of the man who owns the Sun Group. To his credit, Maran does meet you and is a wonderful interviewee. There is another story about how a private equity deal with a major newspaper company in Chennai fell apart because the investor lost patience.
For the last nine years that I have been covering the sector, this aloofness of South Indian M&E firms has been discussed in media circles.
You could argue both ways about this. These companies do very well in their regions, make it to the national rankings on top line. However, when there is talk about, say, general entertainment channels, it is always Hindi, the language the majority of the business press understands, that gets prominence.
The viewership of the entire Sun Network is usually equal to or greater than that of the Star Network. But in media coverage or mindspace, Sun gets lumped as a “regional broadcaster”, the word that everybody uses for languages other than Hindi and English. In a country as heterogeneous as India, that is silly. Each language market runs into several hundred crores in advertising revenues alone — together they make up the Indian market.
In films, the distinction is not so clear. Telugu is the most prolific industry in India, yet it is Tamil that gets more visibility. On the national stage, it is always Hindi films, the largest slice of revenue pie that gets all the attention. So, some feeling of neglect is natural.
Much of this came up in various forms at the Ficci conference in Chennai. Many of the speakers and some of the audience kept harping on the superiority of the work ethic in the film industry in the South versus Mumbai.
Maybe it is. But in spite of this efficiency, most South Indian media companies have rarely shown national ambitions. After liberalisation and the opening up of various segments of the business, many Indian media firms started spreading across. DB Corporation (which owns Dainik Bhaskar) ventured out of its territory in Madhya Pradesh and took on Rajasthan Patrika, then went all over the Hindi belt, launched a Gujarati daily (Divya Bhaskar) and an English daily (DNA), besides a Hindi business daily.
Zee TV, Sun’s contemporary, started with Hindi and soon spread into non-Hindi. It is now a truly national broadcaster with successful channels in Bangla, Marathi and Telugu among several other languages.
With the exception of a handful of companies (notably Sun and Eenadu), most South Indian media firms have remained with the language and region they are most comfortable with.
Maybe that is precisely why a separate conclave is essential for the southern market. It is the first step towards getting firms in this market to come out of their shells onto some podium. That, in turn, will get these firms to mingle with the rest of the industry and its eco-system. The presence of media firms, from Mumbai and Delhi, investment bankers and private equity funds in significant numbers at the Ficci Chennai conference was the clearest indicator that the rest of India wants to do business with the recalcitrant South.
As they meet on a common ground, business imperatives will further push them towards each other.
Could this (hopefully) be the first step towards defining what the national M&E industry is all about?
vanitakohli@hotmail.com
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