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LEAD STORY
Big…Bigger…Biggest
By NEERAJ MAHAJAN
WATCH OUT Rupert Murdoch,
Walt Disney, Subhash Chandra and other media barons, here comes Anil
Ambani with a burning ambition to succeed, big dreams, and big enough
pockets to sustain his vision for global dominance in the fast-growing
broadcast news and entertainment business. Speaking purely from the
Indian perspective, the media and entertainment sector is predicted to
grow twice as big in just two years from its current Rs 437 billion to
a massive Rs 800 billion by 2010. And this is the high tide that Anil
Ambani wishes to ride to establish him self as media Supremo No.1.
 The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai
Ambani (ADA) group comprises Reliance Capital Limited, Reliance
Communications Limited, Reliance Energy Limited, Reliance Health,
Reliance Entertainment and Reliance Power– with diversified interests
in telecommunications, energy, healthcare and power sector. How does
all this explain Ambani's new-found aggression to ride home as the
country's new entertainment czar with complete control over the entire
spectrum of content (movies, Internet portals, television, radio,
music) and its distribution across various platforms?
One thing that can be said
for sure is that Anil Ambani’s entertainment dreams are not just
limited to Indian shores. It's also true that what he is trying to
seek is unheard of in the Indian market so far. But being the great
risk-taker that he is, he has taken the big plunge and whether he is
going to be the big time player that he aspires to be or the biggest
failure…only time will decide.
In a move unprecedented in
Indian history both in terms of scale and magnitude Anil Ambani's
penchant for doing big things is seen as the driving force behind
Reliance Big Entertainment's global aspirations. Instead of first
consolidating its base on the home turf, Reliance Big Entertainment's
is creating ripples as of a new-generation media company, in
Hollywood. The company has already signed up three-time Oscar award
winner and driving force behind some of Hollywood’s most memorable
films like ET and Jurassic Park— Steven Spielberg. And now it expects
to invest anywhere between US $500 million- US $ one billion at least
eight big Hollywood production houses associated with big time
celebrities including Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, Tom Hanks’
Playtone Productions, Jim Carrey's JC 23 Entertainment, Brad Pitt’s
Plan B Entertainment, Nicolas Cage's Saturn Productions and Jay
Roach's Everyman Pictures.
An ultra-modern film studio
being set up as a part of the 1.5 billion dollar joint venture
agreement between Anil Ambani and Steven Spielberg is expected to be
operational in January next year and will go on to produce over 30-35
films the next five years. ADA has also reportedly bought over 200
theatres in cities across United States where it plans to start its
cinema chain under the brand name Big. These in addition to its
partnership deals with eight major studios and co-financing
arrangements with independent production houses of such stars as
Nicholas Cage, Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey are expected to leverage
Reliance BIG Entertainment as a fully integrated movie company with
its operational command over every department of filmmaking –
production, post-production, distribution and exhibition.
Newspaper readers and TV
audience in India would recall the recent high voltage advertising
campaign “dish ho to big ho”. Well that is another big dream of Anil
Ambani to capture the growing Direct-to-Home market. Reliance Big TV,
a subsidiary of Reliance Communications, has drawn up an ambitious
plan to capture 40 per cent of the market share within a year. The
company will offer 202 channels initially and increase the bouquet to
330-350 over a period of time. Big TV will mark the shift of TV
content control from broadcaster to customer hands and define the
future of TV viewing in India. The huge potential that this sector
offers can be judged from the fact that less than 5 per cent of 120
million TV homes in India, the second largest in the world today have
a DTH connection. Given the fact that this DTH subscriber base is
likely to grow 10 times over in the next five years (60 million
subscribers by 2015) — this is another market Anil Ambani wishes to
conquer and dominate.
Ambani's other ambitious
plans for the news and entertainment sector include launching of 20
odd TV channels some of which may be operational by this year-end or
early next year—as soon as the I&B ministry shows the green flag. This
is in addition to big plans for IPTV and film production, distribution
and exhibition, besides FM radio, Internet and television content.
Unlike other groups which
may find it hard to survive, if they were to spread their energies
over so many different areas over such a short time, sustainability
has never been a problem for Anil Ambani's ADA group which among
others controls India's leading Advertising and Marketing Company,
Mudra Communications. This in addition to Reliance ADA group's own
regular advertising can sustain any new media venture. That is one
reason why ADA group has been actively purchasing stakes in media
companies for some time now. The group already has its stronghold in
some of the best known TV channels and production houses in India like
NDTV 24X7, NDTV India, Aaj Tak, Dilli Aaj Tak, Headlines Today, CNN
IBN, IBN 7, CNBC, and CNBC Awaaz with investments in Prannoy Roy's
NDTV, Subhash Chandra's Zee Entertainment, Aroon Purie’s TV Today
Group, Raghav Bahl’s TV 18, and Ronnie Screwala’s UTV.
Another expression of Anil
Ambani’s aggressive media strategy is the new avatar Reliance Money's
Money Mantra on NDTV Profit - the only Hindi show on an English
channel. After a successful 2-year run, the show went off air late
last year, but ADA group pulled the right strings to have it
re-launched under the pretext of investor empowerment.
Significantly by virtue of
its investments in – Zee TV and TV Today groups, Reliance ADA group
has also managed to get a toe-hold in the print media—which has been
something like 'sour grapes' for Anil Ambani. Zee TV owns the DNA
newspaper. It may be recalled that in the mid 1980s, under blistering
attack from the Economic Times, Mudra communications - the Ambani
group campany had attempted to take over Sunday Observer (Vinod Mehta
was its editor) from Ashwin Bhai Shah and run it as “Business and
Financial Observer”. The move backfired as the paper, despite Ambani's
finance did not do well. Though some people say it was the Ambanis who
themselves ‘lost interest’ in the newspaper once their relations
improved with the Times of India Group and TOI wanted the BFO to be
eased out. Well whatever be the reason, since then Anil Ambani never
made a second attempt to start a newspaper. But now it seems he is
having a rethink and planning to test the market once again by
launching a morning tabloid in association with Aroon Purie. Aroon
Purie's TV Today group already has India Today and Business Today
magazines and publishes a mid-day newspaper named ‘Today’.
Looking back, though him
self married to yesterday's actress Tina Munim, Anil Ambani's
honey-moon with the media started way back in mid 2000 when Anil
Ambani acquired controlling stake in Adlabs—a small film processing
company started by Manmohan Shetty specializing in blowing up 16mm
film to 35 mm and film colour corrections. Ambani's magic worked as in
less than a year, Adlabs acquired majority share in Siddhartha Basu’s
Synergy Communications - a leading player in quiz and game shows in
India for almost two decades. This association has been instrumental
behind some of the most popular programmes on Indian television like
Kya Aap Panchvi Pass Se Tez Hai, Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain, Kaun Banega
Crorepati, Bollywood ka Boss, Mastermind and Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa.
This apart the Adlabs
production division has been associated with some of the biggest
releases like Gangaajal (a national award winner), Waqt, Taxi No 9211,
Bluffmaster, Nishabd, Namastey London, Sarkar Raj and Singh is Kinng
to name a few. Today besides being one of the largest entertainment
companies in India in the fields of film processing, production,
exhibition and digital cinema, Adlabs is a strong contender in the FM
radio sector with licences to run 45 stations under its banner—Big
92.7 FM. It already runs 12 stations across the country.
Today, around 70 percent of
all Hindi films produced in India are processed by Adlabs which is one
the biggest cinema chains in India with close to 186 screens across
the country. Ambani plan is to increase the number of Adlabs screens
to 500 within the next two-and-a-half years. The group recently
acquired 250 screens in US and 51 screens in Malaysia. As they say,
there's never a dull moment at an Adlabs cinema.
In 2007 Anil Ambani made an
unsuccessful bid for an IPL team. The lowest winning bid for Rajasthan
Royals (Jaipur team) went in favour of his elder brother Mukesh Ambani.
Anil Ambani finally got a chance to get even when his company
Zapak.com tied up with Shah Rukh's Kolkata Knight Riders to released
games on zapak.com and Knight Riders home page.
As part of the exclusive
tie-up, Zapak will create a cricket gaming zone on the official
website of the Knight Riders. The portal will have a total of 10 games
besides other contests and content about the players and the game.
Cricket is the most popular genre on the Zapak portal. Of the 4.5
million registered gamers on the site, 3 million access cricket-based
games.
Recently Zapak Mail, highly
advertised as a 'simple n fast' e-mail service created a world record
when over 1,15,000 users signed up for their e-mail service in a
single day! Taking a cue from this, the company now plans to set up
Zapak Cafes across 30 cities to offer high-end gaming at a price and
promote its own social networking site BigAdda.com.
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