Amit Khanna: Suddenly Famous

FREEZE FRAME

Certainly the past few months have seen a lot of live action here in India and animated debates in boardrooms and conferences around the world, which sees India as a future entertainment superpower. The last few months has seen a lot of high profile media visits India.

From Murdoch to Eisner (and Igor) Stringer to Parsons all of them have been singing hosannas to India. Befittingly I write this column from the Mecca of American showbiz, Hollywood, where a large Indian delegation has been wined and dined, wooed and feted by many during the American Film Market (AFM).

Germane to this change are several developments, which in a way point to the fact that the dance of the Indian Elephant has begun. An economy growing at 8 per cent with a demographic skew (70 per cent of the population or 800 million below the age of 35) conducive to higher spends on lifestyle and aspirational goods and services make India one of the most attractive markets.

If you add to this the long and rich tradition of creative arts specially films and a working democracy and copyright regime, India definitely looks like the place to be for media & entertainment. No wonder Sony has green lighted its first Bollywood production. No wonder every month sees the launch of another TV channell.

The Media & Entertainment industry has in this calendar year raised about Rs 1,500 crore through IPOs or private equity. The market capitalisation of listed media companies stands at about $3 billion and with the advent of major Industrialists like Anil Ambani, Vijay Mallya and Subhash Chandra, it augurs well too.

To this one can add the original media giants like Times, Hindustan Times, Sun Group, Enadu, Living Media, Jagran and Deccan Chronicle, all of which are fairly diversified in their business. There are of course the many homegrown media barons like Prannoy Roy, Ronnie Screwala and Harish Thawani.

In TV content too there is a fresh sizing up of operations with Balaji leading the charge followed by a dozen large players like Cinevistas, Sidhant Cinevison, BAG Films and Miditech. Here too global players like Freemantle and Endemol are entering the fray. Then there are the movie moghals Yash Chopra, Subhash Ghai, Ramgopal Verma, Mahesh-Mukesh Bhatt, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and you get the drift.

As President of the Film & TV Producers Guild of India, the premier body of content creators in the country, I'm amazed at the number of requests I have started getting from Governments and agencies abroad for meetings with our creative professionals. Bollywood specially is the flavour of the decade.

Foreign governments anxious for filmmakers to come over for shooting are offering special incentives and sops. There are several collaborative films under production and many more development spawning a new genre "�India abroad cinema.

Again almost all major TV Channels are slowly finding their place on DTH platforms around the world. There are some which are also being carried on mainstream cable networks in the US and UK.

The great crossover may not have happened as yet but serious players have realised that a huge and growing domestic market and an international appeal is making India the place to invest in the Media & Entertainment space.

The author is Chairman of Reliance Entertainment and the views expressed are his own.