Our tailwind was young India

Our customer base is already 18 million and growing at half-a-million a year while the US is stuck at 30 million.

RONNIE SCREWVALA 53 CEO AND FOUNDER,UTV SOFTWARE COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED

A decade ago,the biggest challenge the media and entertainment industry in India faced was that we were 40 years behind the developed world. We had to prove that we wouldnt need another 40 years to be on a par with them. What worked in our favour was technology.
Our tailwind was young India,which was looking for change,mostly in the way technology is consumed mobile,Internet,multiplexes but also in their taste for content. India once had the most expensive mobile service providers and now we have the cheapest. Through multiplexes,people are ready to pay four times more for the same content. DTH is a flagship environment where we will be bigger than the US in a few years. Our customer base is already 18 million and growing at half-a-million a year while the US is stuck at 30 million. Today,we are only a decade behind the most developed nations in this industry. The challenge is to catch up and be at the top by 2020.

From 1990 till about four years ago,UTV was involved in B2B business to business processes like television production,animation production and post-production work. It was a comfort zone with little growth. Our biggest move was to enter the B2C business to consumer space through UTV Films and UTV Spotboy,UTV Bindass,UTV World Movies etc. . The biggest success was to bring about this transformation seamlessly.
When we started out,people were sceptical about our survival. But we went into multiple entities like television,gaming,film production,and succeeded. Many asked us what our specialisation was. Our question was: why cant we focus on each equally?

Corporatisation of filmmaking is said to be one of the biggest milestones of this decade. Most people equate it with signing cheques and agreements. To us,its been about pre-planning our investments and knowing what we were doing over the next two years. It worked because we backed our content. Other production houses will either make the content and outsource the distribution or vice versa. We took the 360-degree approach.

For example,look at UTVs attempt with Spotboy. We differentiated it from UTV films not because we believe that it caters to a multiplex audience. In fact,I dont believe in that term. The success of Dibakar Banerjees Khosla Ka Ghosla as a regular UTV movie made us realise that when the content is good and the budget small,it works if we publicise it with limited expectations but take it to the masses. The audience then comes in with an open mind. As a model,it worked for us and we immediately thought of branding it.

The other challenge this decade threw up was 2009. I wont call what we faced in India a recession. What we faced was a correction. It did us good because the riff-raff got weeded out. If this boom had continued till 2011 and had we gone bust then,the Indian economy would have suffered more.
Its is tough to envision 2020 today. In my opinion,10-year vision statements are not visionary at all. What one can plan is the next two to three years.

Like the last decade gave us the broadband,we are now waiting for a technological leap. Broadband has arrived in small towns but the reach of mobile technology is wider. India currently has a 400 million base. 3G technology is almost here. Even if only 20 per cent of that base makes the most of the technology,it leaves us with a 100 million people to cater to. Its a goldmine no one has yet explored.
UTV has enough steel to show in everything that its doing. To be honest,we are not good at celebrating and it is still work in progress for us. From games to broadcast to movies to new media,we are looking at being a global media conglomerate from India. We are ruthlessly focused on getting there.