Dr Pramath Raj Sinha, MD and CEO, ABP Pvt Ltd

I think The Times of India, Delhi and Mumbai are very local newspapers, in fact just as The Telegraph is a good paper for Kolkata and the east, North-East or Jharkhand. I think we could be successful in Mumbai or Delhi. But again the question arises 'will the same brand work?' The Telegraph itself is a proposition that may or may not succeed in Delhi or Mumbai. When we are talking of national presence, we should not be talking of only Mumbai or Delhi, but of a pan-India presence. The point I want to make here is that being in Delhi or Mumbai doesn't make you national, it actually makes you a local paper that comes out from five locations.

Dr Pramath Raj Sinha has a lot to say when it comes to the ABP Group's vision, direction and offerings. The progressive looking Managing Director and CEO of ABP Pvt Ltd is upbeat about not just the ABP Group but the state of West Bengal as well. The ABP Group is one of India's leading and most diversified media conglomerates with properties such as Ananda Bazar Patrika, The Telegraph, BusinessWorld, STAR News (in partnership with STAR TV), and Penguin Books India (in partnership with Pearson International).

Prior to joining ABP, Sinha was a partner with McKinsey & Company, working with its Canadian and Indian practices. In his 12 years with McKinsey, he assisted both public and private sector clients in a diverse set of industries on issues relating to business strategy and performance improvement in North America and Asia.

Sinha took a year off from McKinsey to be the Founding Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB), an initiative led by McKinsey and a group of leading Indian business leaders, in partnership with Kellogg and Wharton, to establish a world-class business school in India. He has been associated with the project right from its inception and continues to be actively involved in the School as a member of its Executive Board.

In conversation with exchange4media's Indrani Sinha, Dr Sinha talks about the ABP Groups new forays into the FM radio space, events, online and television, the media scene in India as well as some reflections on the media scene in West Bengal.

Q. ABP Group is essentially in the print media. How do you see the print media changing given the rapid strides that the electronic media is taking?

I think people in the print media have to embrace the electronic media. The days of being a pure print player are numbered. I am not suggesting the demise of print immediately by any means -- people have been talking about the demise of print for almost 25 years and nothing has happened yet. Even in the West it is under attack. I would say that it's not that it's not going to happen or that it's going to happen tomorrow. But as a group if you are growing, you have to look at the fact that a lot of the growth is happening in the non-print space. We are certainly not of the view that we should restrict ourselves to print. This group has gone from a Bengali newspaper to English newspaper to magazines of all kinds; now we are getting into TV, radio, online and so on. So, I think that ideally other print media groups must hedge their backs in some way as they look ahead and get into other media.

I fundamentally believe that in our lifetime, the world is going to change to a model where people are going to demand much more customised content. And they would like it -- both in terms of timing and in terms of delivery -- to be at their convenience. So, you're going to say that you may want to hear this interview either on television or on radio, I'd like to hear it when I want to or I want to watch excerpts or hear excerpts or want to see transcripts online. I would like to read it on my cellphone screen when I'm driving to the airport. This same interview could be delivered in many forms across different delivery platforms, it could be broadcast or made available on demand. So, the question of whether you are in print or television or electronic media is actually going to become an irrelevant question because as a content provider you have to cater to all.

The experience has been great. Part of the reason, as you mentioned, is because I am from a non-media background. However, as a consultant I have done a lot of media work. Throughout my 13 years at McKinsey, I had been doing some media work almost every year or so right from the days when I was in Toronto or North America, and even later on when I moved to India. I have worked across newspapers, magazines, television, and also done some work in films and music. In the case of ABP -- as is well known they have been our client when I was with McKinsey - I have shared a special relationship with them. We have worked very closely with ABP on some strategic issues as well as some operational issues.

I was very familiar with the people in ABP, which is of course very important, and they in turn know me too. I would say I came in with a significant advantage, which is often not available to people who make these kinds of transitions. I not only made a switch from being an advisor to actually running the company, but was making a switch from one industry to another. In that sense, the environment was very, very familiar and I think I was able to slide right into it. The experience has been great as I was able to get a lot of work done right from day one, which is very satisfying. You don't end up spending a lot of time learning the business or getting to know the people or the company or what the issues are.

We as a group are really excited about the progress that Bengal is making. I don't think we've ever had any political leanings. We've always tried to be very objective. Our alignment is with the growth of the state and to that extent there is an alignment between what the West Bengal Chief Minister is trying to do and what we aspire to do. If the state does well, we do well as a group. There's opportunity for us to do greater things. We're very hopeful that the state will do well under the current regime, and that we will be part of that growth. Obviously, we will do everything to support that growth. So we're very focused on the economy and development of Bengal, rather than Buddhababu or the CPM or any other party for that matter. And that continues to be our position.

Yes, definitely. The Internet and the mobile phone or IPTV -- which is basically TV on demand or video on demand -- will be the three very critical things that all media companies will have to play a major role in. A few people believe in this with passion, while some are more traditional in their thoughts, they feel not much money is to be made in this business. We are going to make a very aggressive push in this area. With Saurav coming on board, we are going to build a team under him which will focus on all of these areas -- be it mobile telephony or the Internet or TV or video on demand. We also have a partnership of sorts with Sify and are planning to work along with them to develop our Internet offering and video on demand.

We don't have plans to start any new magazines. We are very excited about the possibilities of expanding the scope of BusinessWorld into other areas such as events, conferences, research, seminars -- offering more value to people who want to do business in India and abroad. INFOCOM, which is now very successful and is the largest conference on exposition on IT in India, was born out of BusinessWorld. We would like to do more such things through this platform. We are not exploring any other English magazines at this point of time.

We are in the stage of planning and figuring out what we do in each of our properties. In TV we know that our end game is not just Hindi and Bengali news; we got into TV because we believe in the future of television in this country. Contrary to what many believe, we are not just sleeping partners of STAR News. We actually run and operate it. We have our team there and are making significant investments in making STAR News the leading channel in this country in the news domain. Similarly, it was our idea along with our partners to start STAR Ananda. In both cases, our experience has been extremely positive. We believe that our focus on high quality content really makes a difference.

We are also considering news channels in other languages. We are trying to figure out which markets make more sense. We would also not be afraid to enter the niche channel segment, which are focused on a particular set of viewers, such as a channel for women or young people. With the advent of DTH and CAS, and possibly IPTV, where people are going to watch channels on their computers through broadband connections, I think it will be possible for us to make money through subscription revenues on niche channels like everywhere around the world. Our focus will be on regional languages and news as well as niche sectors where we can have distinctive content. Desh, Sananda, Anandalok, Anandamela, Unish Kuri, Unish Kuri Career -- all cover the entire family and a gamut of interest areas – and is something we would like to replicate in television.

This line of thinking is driven partly by looking at how successful media companies get built over time and indeed how conglomerates like ours succeed over time. The opportunities in each of the media businesses that we are in are very different. The dynamics, the comparative challenges, cost structures, and business models are very different. While each of these pieces are knitted and stitched together by the ABP Corporate Group, there should be a fair degree of flexibility and ability to do what it takes to succeed and then build leadership.

Therefore, if you look at our Bengali newspaper business or English newspaper business or television or magazine businesses or the newly launched radio business or some of the things that we are doing on the Internet or mobile, we would like each of these to be standalone entities and pursue their own growth strategies and aspirations as much as possible.

If you compare Ananda Bazaar Patrika and The Telegraph, the former has nowhere to go in terms of opportunities, which are all in Bengal. But The Telegraph has tremendous opportunities. It could go well beyond Kolkata and the North-East, it could cover the entire East, it could go beyond the East. It could partner with other English newspapers in other markets, we could even have partnerships with newspaper companies from abroad. Somebody might be more interested Ananda Bazaar Patrika piece than The Telegraph piece or they might be interested in the TV piece as opposed to the radio piece as opposed to the magazine piece and we need to have that flexibility. So it's for that flexibility or focus or differing levels of aspiration and opportunities that we want to carve out each of these as very clear entities that are then held together by the Corporate Group. Large and successful media companies around the world are run like that.

We will do it across the group over time. For example, STAR News and STAR Ananda are run out of a separate entity where we have a joint venture with Rupert Murdoch's STAR TV. The radio venture is being run out of a separate company.

We might experiment with some more entertainment type news. I don't think you'll see a soap opera on STAR Ananda! But yes, we would like to do a lot of programmes that border on entertainment, like news about soaps or a programme on crime like ‘Sansani’. It could very well be on an entertainment channel. If you look at our coverage of cricket, it could very well be on a sports channel. Everybody's doing this, not just us. People do a lot of travel, funds and money management, cookery shows on news channels; so I think from that angle there is a wide range of things that one can do, and we would also like to use STAR Ananda as a delivery channel to experiment in some of these areas.

I would like to break this question into two parts. I have no doubt in my mind that all our products have a national appeal. Our content is of very high quality. And because of that, we are leaders in the markets that we operate in -- whether it is regional with our daily newspapers or magazines, or national with our TV channels or BusinessWorld magazine, we are No. 1. If you look across our stable, STAR News would perhaps be the only No. 2 product in its category. In the last one year, it has grown from being No. 4 to No. 2 and I have no doubt that it will become No. 1 too.

It is not just the quality but the content too that has universal appeal. There is no reason why the content of The Telegraph cannot be appreciated nationally or not stand up to the best competition nationally. So, in terms of quality, our products are very high. But when it comes to brands, the question is whether each of the brands is extendable or not. Each of our Bengali magazines and dailies is very much identified with Bengal and Bengalis as there is also the language issue. But if you convert them into another language and have the same brand name, I am not too sure whether they will have the same appeal.

The content of Sananda might appeal to all women, but I am not sure whether Sananda will work as a national brand. That is where we have to be careful when we take our product national. We have to understand what the perception of the brand is and how people would react to it and then decide whether it should be done under the same brand name or a different brand name. As long as our content gets the value that it deserves, we are open to a different brand name. Quite simply, I think we should have national aspirations for all our brands, all our products. Thereafter, whether the brand hits or not is again a marketing-branding issue, which we'll have to figure out when we decide to do it.

In your statement you said two things -- Mumbai or Delhi editions and national newspaper. I see those as quite opposite things, because I think The Times of India in Delhi and Mumbai are very local newspapers, just as The Telegraph is a good paper for Kolkata and the East, North-East or Jharkhand. I think we can be successful in Mumbai or Delhi. But again the question arises -- will the same brand work? I am not sure. There will be a perception that it is a Kolkata paper. The same thing happened when TOI went to Delhi or HT went to Mumbai, or that The Hindu is the paper of the South. This is what I mean by a brand connotation attached to the same content. If I wanted to call it something else, say, a DNA or X, Y, or Z, I am sure it will have an opportunity to succeed.

The Telegraph itself is a proposition that may or may not succeed in Delhi or Mumbai. When we are talking of national presence, we should not be talking of only Mumbai or Delhi, but of a pan-India presence. The point I want to make here is that being in Delhi or Mumbai doesn't make you national, it actually makes you a local paper that comes out from five locations. We do have the platform to build a national presence -- our editorial pages, national, international or sports coverage or supplements, they are all quite relevant nationally. Maybe one day we will go national. It is too early for me to say anything right now.

The other thing one must understand is that everybody wants to go to Mumbai or Delhi. But the question is who makes money in Mumbai or Delhi? These are markets that already have some very dominant players, and it is tough to beat their position just as it is tough to move us in Kolkata.

Today, there are a lot of opportunities available not just in the daily space but in the non-dailies, print, non-print or electronic or TV space, so it's also a question of where we should prioritise our efforts as a group. We have made a significant commitment in TV, so as a group we have to decide where our focus will be. Maybe it is better to go national on television than to think about going national on newspaper. Again, I am saying this with some uncertainty only because I am yet to resolve some of these strategic issues, given the time I have been here, only four months.

We are in the process of firming up our plans, but we would like to be different. The days when you could just keep playing Bollywood top hits are kind of over. A couple of channels can do that, but everybody doing a 'Jhalak dikhla ja' or a 'Kaajra re' is not going to cut from a business standpoint. We have to come up with something that is quite distinctive. I have thrown that challenge to our team. Initially, we might not be able to come up with anything more than plain vanilla offering, but over time we will experiment and come back with something quite different. We have been quite cautious about radio -- we too could have forayed into 20 cities -- but at the moment we are not clear about what model to adopt. We just don't want to be yet another radio station playing the same old stuff. At the moment we are doing a market research in Kolkata to see what people's perceptions are about the current FM stations and where they see the gaps. It will be very much market driven.

We see events as a major growth area and we are doing very well in events. I have mentioned Infocom, which is almost doubling its revenues every year. You may have seen the recent Tilottama event. There are some events which are not revenue driven and are more for promoting a brand connect with our readers. That apart, we are very focused on revenue generating events and events as a business that generate profits for us. In India today, you don't have very large event companies -- you have event management companies but no company that does very large events. We are trying to change it. We are trying to build a separate team that will focus in this area. There are two or three flagship events like Infocom or Tilottama, which will be scaled up over the years and we will do more such events. We'd like to go national.

This year was my first exposure to Tilottama, and I felt that it could have participation from people from all over the country. By raising the quality of the event by inviting participation and having names like model Noyonika Chatterjee or VLCC helped. The team did a great job and has renewed confidence now that it can be scaled up. These things may not happen immediately because you have to build up. And if you look at the people who have come out of this in the past -- the Bipasha Basus and Celina Jaitleys of the world -- they have gone on to become national figures. So why should we believe that we are just a regional or local thing? We have a great product in Tilottama. Whether the same brand will work or not, we need to take a look at that.

I don't see news as a commodity at all. In our organization, the focus is very much in being distinctive and different and not being a commodity. Commoditisation would actually mean that I don't really work on the product so much and focus more on marketing and branding. That is still not the case. People still want high quality content. I don't believe that content has got commoditised yet. The challenge is that several newcomers are doing things in a way that is very much copycat, hence it is very difficult to stand out among the clutter. Everything looks the same.

However, publications like The Telegraph or Ananda Bazaar Patrika have such high dominance that there is still a lot of value and differentiation that people see in our products, and I think that is true for a number of other traditional companies.

As for professional managers, we will be joined by Vikas Gupta, formerly Head of Marketing, Coca-Cola India. He will be joining us as CMO for the group and will oversee all our brands. In addition, he will have the responsibility of running BusinessWorld as President of the magazine's business unit. Along with the value and the product that we offer, marketing has to play a greater role because that is what the new players are bringing. We cannot sit back and say that our products will sell on their own.

With the changing demographics in this country, younger people are looking for more communication and marketing. I think professionals are joining from FMCG and other companies because of the huge opportunities in this space. In the US they use an expression "you ain't seen nothing yet", and that is how I would characterise this industry. Part of the reason I joined is because we are really at the cusp of the beginning of this industry. It's reasonably small -- $4-5 billion, media and entertainment put together. If you look at this as a percentage of our GDP and how much people consume media and how much spending there is in media, it's very small compared to most benchmarks around the world. This industry has a long way to go and there is a huge growth opportunity. That is why one sees a lot of professionals moving into this space.

In Desh, we see a magazine that has a big latent market of readers. Based on some of our research findings, we have reduced the price of the magazine despite the rising cost of printing. The fact was that we were holding it back from interested Bengali readers who would very much want to have a copy of Desh today. So, while it may have coincided with the arrival of India Today's Bengali edition, the content of Desh is quite different from what India Today would offer. Our intent is to reach out to more Bengali readers rather than curb a product that has a lot of potential.

We are trying to experiment with this model, where we are trying to focus on increasing circulation rather than holding it back. When you lower the price, revenues go up, circulation goes up, but it doesn't make up for the cost, so you do need more advertising and so on. We were willing to take this risk only because we got the feeling that this magazine has great potential. People read it because of an emotional connect, but if you hike the price too much, people might feel the pinch a bit too much. While we have increased the prices of all our magazines, Desh has been the only exception.