Reliance Money forays into Saudi Arabia

Reliance Money provides customers with access to equities, equity and commodities futures, mutual funds, life and general insurance products and off-shore investment. The company has aggressive plans to venture into the Africa, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong. The company has already forayed into the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong, and plans to expand its operations in over 15 countries spread across Europe, North Africa, the West Asia and South East Asia by next year.

As part of its plan to expand its global footprint, Reliance Money, the brokering arm of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, has launched a joint venture in Saudi Arabia with Bahrain-based advisory firm Riyada Consulting.

The new entity Riyada Reliance Money is the new joint venture company. The Riyada Reliance Money plans to raise $53.34 million (Rs.2.3 billion) in the first phase through sale of a stake to Gulf institutional investors. Reliance Money chief executive and director Sudip Bandyopadhyay said, “We plan to have a significant footprint in the region. We will be seeking regulatory approvals and also be looking at strategic dilution of equity to institutional investors in the Gulf region.”

The venture will seek regulatory approvals for launching services, including brokering, corporate finance, investment banking and asset management.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com and http://www.reuters.com

Reliance Money ties up with Lagos firm to enter Nigeria

Reliance Money provides customers with access to equities, equity and commodities futures, mutual funds, life and general insurance products and off-shore investment. The company has aggressive plans to venture into the Africa, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong. The company has already forayed into the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong, and plans to expand its operations in over 15 countries spread across Europe, North Africa, the West Asia and South East Asia by next year.

As part of its plan to expand its global footprint, Reliance Money on Sunday announced its debut in Nigeria, in a tie-up with Lagos-based industrial house Chellarams Plc. The announcement was made by Sudip Bandyopadhyay, director & CEO of Reliance Money, and Suresh Chellaram, managing director of Chellarams Plc,. The presence of Reliance Money in Nigeria will definitely complement their efforts to have a larger role in this region. Reliance Money also plans to take membership of the Lagos Stock Exchange in future.

Nigeria is one of the largest financial markets in Africa, also having the largest population in the region. As per the company’s claims, it is the first Indian company to have received an in-principal approval for setting up a branch and offering investment advice in the Sultanate of Oman.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com and http://www.dnaindia.com

Economics of Aarushi’s murder mystery

Background
Arushi’s body was found at her Noida residence on May 16, 2008. While police initially suspected missing domestic help Hemraj, but his body was found from the same house the next day. Arushi’s father Rajesh Talwar was arrested for the twin murder. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been investigating the case.

Economy
Aarushi’s murder mystery is one of the never ending NEWS opera which started on the 16th May 2008. The NOIDA police, CBI and media have different versions of the murder mystery. The very first version was that domestic servant is the killer; then came the story – Father is the killer. As per the latest version CBI claims that Krishna, the man who worked at Dr Talwar’s clinic, has confessed his involvement in the murders of Aarushi Talwar and her domestic help Hemraj …. then came Rajkumar – a new angle to the story …. Story is never ending. ..

Since 16 May, Indian media has made millions by printing and telecasting the story at various news formats. Be it print or television every one is making money. Aarushi’s murder mystery has not only attracted NEWS operas but also has attracted the TV soap opera queen Ekta Kapoor. She wants to feature Aarushi’s life and death in her popular soap opera “Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki”.

The Aarushi’s murder mystery is one of the many examples of creative impotency of the Indian media. The media which has no NEWS; the soap operas which has no good story line …

Mobile Value Added Services

In the early years telecom revolution piggybacked on booming Indian economy, increased disposable income, proliferation of mobile devices, and reduction in call rates. The scenario has changed; Indian mobile users are very comfortable in using their phones and want to exercise option other than the basic voice applications. Today, the mobile phone has become a truly personal device and Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) has become an extension of persona. Currently Mobile Value Added Services accounts for 10-12 percent of the operator’s revenue. Industry research on MVAS suggest that, in the next 10 years it will contribute around 60 percent of the telecom operator’s revenue. They believe innovative mobile content and applications are the only way to keep a subscriber glued to particular services. In India, the revenue from MVAS is expected to increase to USD 348.8 M in 2009, at a compound annual growth rate of more than 50 percent. The prominent players of the industry are ACL Wireless, Active Media, Air2Web, AOL Mobile, Cellebrum, Cellnext, Hungama Mobile, IMIMobile, Indiatimes Mobile, Jataayu, Mauj, Mobile365, One97, OnMobile, Phoneytunes, Roamware.

MVAS in India has grown from the early days of SMS to host of other services including wallpapers downloads, ring tones, caller ring back tones, SMS contests, and games. For better understanding of the MVAS, it can be divided into basic and advanced services.

Basic MVAS includes SMS and Mobile music. Growth of SMS traffic is a direct result of high voice traffic with SMS as it is priced substantially below call tariffs. This has led to extensive use of SMS based services by the operators, especially the reality shows. Indian Film Industry, electoral campaign, and Sports sponsors. The other prominent basic MVAS is Mobile music. It comprises ring tones, caller ring-back tones, and music clips.
Advanced MVAS include mobile TV/video, full-motion videos, wireless teleconferencing, multi-player online games, and m-commerce. These services typically require high bandwidth and a superior level of support technology. The introduction of 3G will help operatrs enhance features of SMS based IM’s, Stock Alerts, Chat Applications, Examination results, Movie Ticketing.

VALUE CHAIN
There are multiple stakeholders playing across the MVAS value chain many with overlapping roles and functions. A well demarcated value chain of MVAS is yet to evolve. The main stakeholders involved in the vas value chain are:

Content owners: At the first level of the MVAS value chain are the content owners, which develop original copyright content. There are different forms of content providers. First in the list is the original copyright content developer like music production houses – Tseries, BIG Music, SaReGaMa, Sony; bollywood production houses – Adlabs, Yash Raj and other media houses – Star, NDTV, Zee, and TV18. There are other set of players who are customized content creators for the mobile value added services. They are the companies who generate customized content for users through their own portals like Mauj, One 97, and Hungama Mobile.

Mobile operators: They provide transport and support mechanisms for delivery of mobile content. Most operators are now trying to innovate their Value Added Services offerings and create sharper differentiation for their offerings. Most of the basic content available to the end users revolves ringtones of popular bollywood songs, wallpapers of movie, and games developed around movie themes.

Technology enablers: They provide technology platforms that enable access to MVAS. They are content portals or content aggregators. These are organizations that gather web content and distribute content to suit customer needs like hungama Mobile, Indiatimes , OnMobile, Bharti Telesoft, Webaroo, etc.

Handset manufacturers: Mobile handset manufacturers also play an important role by including embedding software links in their handsets, allowing direct access to content portals, creating services customized to the need of certain regions, etc

BARRIERS TO GROWTH OF MVAS IN INDIA
In India, the VAS industry is still don’t have a proper process or common benchmark. Furthermore, the revenue sharing is a major issue. It stems from the fact that the operators charge low revenue from the end user leading to lower revenue share with MVAS. The industry has attracted many players, leading to the competition which is driving down the revenue share. Few other challenges are to show the customer value beyond mobile entertainment, establish MVAS standards, copyright protection initiatives. The challenges that need the immediate attention of key stakeholders are:

Copyright protection: In India, the regulatory framework for copyright protection continues to remain weak despite the extension of existing copyright laws to content. The MVAS industry requires a stringent regulatory framework in place, to encourage the flow of branded content to consumers. The protected MVAS content will lead to increased revenues from data services, stop customer churn and motivate MVAS provider to investment in innovative.

Low feature handsets: In India, the mobile subscriber base is growing, a large chunk of the market is opting for basic low feature handsets in spite of the fact that handset prices are coming down. According to the India Mobile Handset Usage Satisfaction Study 2006, an integrated digital camera, FM Radio, and speaker phone features remain the most likely upgrade drivers. The poor penetration of feature-rich mobile handsets is a barrier to the growth of MVAS in India.

Transparency in revenue sharing arrangements: In Indian market the biggest area of concern is the skewed revenue sharing models where the content providers have to share revenue with content aggregator and service provider. The Indian MVAS industry needs to take a close look at best practices in developed markets like China, Japan, and other European nations to design a fair revenue distribution system. There is a need to create a transparent framework with a fair system of payouts to different stakeholders across the value chain.

Focus on youth and entertainment: The MVAS market in India continues to be focused on entertainment – movies, music and sports which cater to the needs of the younger consumer segment. There is a need to focus on information VAS and transactional VAS (M-commerce), which will ensure uniform growth among all consumer segments. MVAS should create applications for niche segments, which will create real value for the subscribers.

Absence of utility services: The cost of Entertainment VAS, which has a high perceived value, is high but over a period of time as customers get used to it, the willingness to pay high amounts may come down and then MVAS will have to shift focus from Entertainment VAS to other utility services. These are the services which have a high practical value. They services mainly fall in the category of mCommerce and to some extent Infotainment. The future belongs to services providing value to the customer exploiting the mobility factor.

Lack of Infrastructure: There are a lot of services which cannot be introduced in India because of lack of supporting infrastructure. The major roadblock in providing quality content to the end user has been the availability of bandwidth. Most of the applications are not able to provide the optimum user experience due to bandwidth issue, which makes streaming and downloading practically impossible.

THE FUTURE OF MVAS IN INDIA
In years to come MVAS will see a lot of structural changes, consolidation and emergence of cutting edge services. At present biggest pie of the MVAS revenue goes to the mobile operators but in years to come they will lose prominence in the value chain. The market for Content Aggregators will consolidate and with their better bargaining power, this will ensure a revenue shift from Operators to Aggregators in the value chain. In MVAS content there will be shift from entertainment MVAS to interactive MVAS. However mobile gaming will continue to grow and will contribute a higher share to the VAS pie. The other big change is emergence of regional content. The regional content is giving a significant boost to the content market especially in the entertainment category. With all these changes the MVAS industry is about to mature.

MVAS – KEY PLAYERS

This mobile value added services industry is about to mature and awaiting some consolidation and here is the list of active MVAS providers: ACL Wireless, Active Media, Air2Web, AOL Mobile, AstroYogi Mobile, Astute Systems , Bharti Telesoft, BUGZY, Cellebrum, Cellnext, Coruscant Tec, Digital Strait, EnableM, Hungama Mobile, IMIMobile, Indiatimes Mobile, Jataayu, Kirusa, Lifetree, Mauj, mChek, Mjoy, Mobile365, Motvik, mobiSolv, Mobile2Win, One97, OnMobile, OnyxMobile, ORG Telecom , Phoneytunes, Roamware, Rediff Mobile, Sarayu Telecom, Tech Mahindra, Telenity, ValueFirst, Yahoo Mobile India, Webdunia, Ziva Software. This section will introduce certain key players in the VAS industry. These players are actively involved in the VAS value chain.
ACL Wireless Limited
ACL established in 2000 is a privately owned company funded by IAVM, with strategic investments from Naspers/MIH. It employs over 240 people and is headquartered in Delhi.
ACL Wireless is a mobile VAS player in managed mobility and community messaging service across 21 countries. It works with Airtel in India, MTC-Vodafone in Middle East, Claro in Brazil and AIS in Thailand. ACL Wireless offers interactive SMS & voice response along with permission based SMS broadcasts & alerts. ACL wireless offerings also includes service creation and operation for enterprises and operator VAS, billing & content aggregation. Its community & messaging services suite includes: mobile chat, mobile social networking, mobile photo sharing and internet messengers on mobile available across GPRS & SMS mediums.
ACL has partnerships with Gemalto, Smart Trust, Eposs and Unified Communications which enable it to develop cutting edge products and distribute them globally.

Bharti Telesoft
Bharti Telesoft, established in 1999 is owned by Bharti Enterprises, venture capital investors Sequoia Capital and Cisco. Bharti Telesoft offers software products and services to wireless and wireline operators.
In 2002, Bharti Telesoft acquired CellCloud Technologies, a leader in the field of prepaid recharge solutions and in 2007, acquired Jataayu a leading player in the mobile Internet space, to bolster its portfolio of Internet and VAS applications for mobile operators and handset manufacturers. Bharti Telesoft has deployed solutions for over 100 mobile operator customers in more than 60 countries worldwide. Its solutions help power services to over 500 million mobile subscribers globally. It has a strong sales and marketing focus in the Asia Pacific region, Russia and the CIS, the Middle- East, Africa, Europe and Latin America. It has its R&D facilities at New Delhi, Banglore and Mumbai.
Bharti Telesoft is works on number of services including SMS router, voice SMS, SMS chat, and Live video services, P2P transactions including balance transfer, music sharing and videos sharing. mCommerce and Live TV to mobile are the key focus areas for future growth.

Indiagames
Indiagames Ltd is India’s benchmark mobile and online gaming company The Company is engaged in publishing and developing games across various platforms including Online through its portal http://www.indiagames.com, and Mobile. Majority of Indiagames revenues comes from international markets as in India industry is still in its nascent stage. The company plans to tap the growing mobile market in India and is investing heavily in generating awareness about games among mobile users. Indiagames is targeting 50% market share in mobile gaming business by 2010.
Indiagames has over 300 employees and offices in Mumbai, London, Los Angeles & Beijing. Indiagames’ distribute its product through partnerships with mobile operators in over 75 countries. The key investors of Indiagames include UTV, Adobe Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.

Mauj
Mauj established in 2003, as a digital media entertainment company. It is the wireless division of the People group with interests across very well known internet businesses in India like (Shaadi.com, Fropper.com) and Film Production (People Pictures). MAUJ has developed partnerships with more than 25 operators and portals worldwide. The Company specializes in Mobile games both in the domestic as well as international markets. The company currently develops over 20 original titles every month and also has marketing rights for 800 international mobile games. The company has one of the strongest management teams as well as infrastructure in this industry and employs approximately 150 people in its offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Dubai, London, and New York.
Mauj offers services in three areas: Mobile Content & Applications aggregation and repurposing which includes Games, Wallpapers, Ringtones, News, Matrimonial; Mobile Software & Services which provides Middleware Solutions, Roaming Applications, SMS Gateways; and Mobile Media Solutions which includes Advertising and Branding Opportunities.

OnMobile
OnMobile, Incubated at Infosys in 2000, is headquartered in Bangalore. It is the first Indian telecom VAS company to go public. OnMobile also has offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Singapore, Paris, Jakarta, London, Kuala Lumpur, Seattle and Sydney. OnMobile is India’s largest white labeled VAS company for Mobile, Landline and Media Service Providers. OnMobile offers integrated platform across various technology silos traditionally found in Telco’s infrastructure for up selling and improving user experience. On Mobile services include: Managed Services like infrastructure, operations, SLA management, fault management etc. for telcos; Marketing Support Services which include Mobile 1-to-1 marketing, Event based opportunity analysis, execution of marketing services, Content Aggregation and Management for their enterprises customers; and Mobile Media, and mCommerce.
The acquisition of French data products company Voxmobili has further strengthened the product portfolio with products like Phone Backup, Network Address Book & Mobile Paparazzi – deployed with many global carriers like Orange, AT&T, France Telecom, T-Mobile, Wanadoo, & Turkcell.

Phoneytunes
Phoneytunes offers mobile content services, content management solutions, premium billing platforms. Phoneytunes has a state-of-art technology development center in New Delhi. Phoneytunes is among the top and most respected players in the Telecom VAS domain with a series of highly innovative, high feature and revenue generating services and platforms helping carriers and operators globally with powerful technological solutions. The key values while designing solutions include helping operators with increase in revenues and reduction in costs. Phoneytunes focus on: Development Platforms which include BREW, SMS, Symbian MMS platforms, online charging platforms, portal frameworks; Content creation & aggregation which offer mobile content and interactive voice recognition systems, Customized polyphonic and monophonic ringtones creation, wallpapers, video downloads; Application Development that include Utility applications like SMS gateways & SMS applications. Fun Applications like SMS / WAP Games & Chat/ Dating engines; and Other services including mobile secrets, phone tricks, lost mobile reporting board and a discussion forum.

Webaroo
Webaroo established in June 2004 has developed several market leading products. Some have already achieved significant market attraction. Webaroo employs approximately 150 people in its offices in India and USA. Webaroo’s founders include Silicon Valley based experienced serial entrepreneurs Rakesh Mathur (founder of Armedia, Junglee, Stratify) and Beerud Sheth (founder of Elance). Webaroo’s management includes world-class, highly-experienced executives with decades of experience in building and managing high-growth companies. Webaroo has offices in Silicon Valley, Seattle, Mumbai and Delhi. Webaroo develops mobile software and services for consumers across the world. With a large and rapidly growing user-base, it offers advertisers — unprecedented mobile reach and targeting. Its core offering include SMS GupShup service that enables creation of groups of any size and allow communication with all group members at a cost of a single SMS sent by the group creator; Webaroo Software enables users to browse and search web content offline which is compressed for consumption on laptops, PDAs or smartphones. Since these features are built on an SMS platform, it can be used even on the most basic and low-end phones.

Spice Mobile VAS (formerly Cellebrum)
The spice group promoted company has recently gone through rebranding and is now called as ‘Spice Mobile VAS’. The company is headquartered in Parwanoo in HP. Spice Mobile VAS has presence in 10 countries and employs around 450 people. Its corporate office is in Noida and registered office is in New Delhi. It also has regional offices in Chandigarh, Mumbai, Kolkata, Lucknow and Bangalore. Spice Mobile VAS is a technology enabler in wireless application space. The company develops applications for three main segments – voice based services, messaging and roaming.

PayMate
PayMate established in 2006 is a Mumbai based wireless transactions platform provider. It spin-off from Coruscant Tec, to on wireless content. PayMate has created a viable ecosystem to enable wireless transactions connecting banks, switches, merchants and customers using a simple, secure and seamless technology.
PayMate portfolio includes products like GiftMate, FlyBuySms and many more value added services which go beyond just payments to stuff like mobile shopping and gifting. The primary offerings of PayMate are : one, Payment Services where consumers can use their credit card via mobile phones for in-person and remote purchases and transactions like shop online, buy movie & airline tickets, pay bills at restaurants and retail stores, etc. Two, Gift Mate, a mobile voucher, which enables one to gift money to anyone with a mobile phone which can then be spent at over 3,000 online and offline stores.

Mobile Value Added Services demands Level playing field with Telecoms

The value added services industry has contributed significantly to the growth and adoption of mobile telephony in India. It has also helped telecom sector clock additional revenue. Hence, it is imperative to have a level playing field between large telecommunication and small Mobile Value Added Services companies. Based on the fact the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has sought a level playing field between the telecom operators and the value added services companies. They strongly believe that it is imperative for the growth and sustainability of mobile telephony in India.

IAMAI has asked for a faster process of obtaining shortcodes, standardisation of the terms and conditions of access and interconnection and a transparent revenue sharing model between operators and Mobile Value Added Services players. IAMAI has also said that there should be some additional obligations on the current licensees in terms of maintaining a level playing field, otherwise, the MVAS industry should be treated as the single largest users of telecom services and their rights should be protected.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

Reliance Big Entertainment and Amitabh Bachchan

The $1 billion deal between Reliance Big Entertainment and the production firms of Hollywood
stars Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, George Clooney, Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt and film-makers Chris Columbus and Jay Roach to make films was the beginning of the Anil Ambani’s journey towards transforming his company into global filmmaker. It seems the hunger of Anil Ambani is getting bigger by the day.

Reliance Big Entertainment, just after negotiation with Hollywood bigwig Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks where Anil has planned to infuse about $600 million he also convinced the legendary Amitabh Bachchan.

The deal could be worth $200m-$300m (final figure is not yet known) and would include film production, television series, reality shows, internet and mobile content besides live shows. Reliance Big Entertainment will look after managing marketing and the distribution of projects, and the Bachchans – Amitabh, Jaya, Abhishek and Aishwarya would come up with the creative inputs and would be handling the entertainment aspect of the project.

The joint venture will use brand Bachchans in films, production, TV series, internet, reality shows and mobile content. The other directors who have been signed up to direct films for the joint venture are Balakrishnan, Sujoy Ghosh, Rohan Sippy and Dr Chandraprakash Dwivedi. No wonder the deal is in line with Reliance Big Entertainment strategy to tie up with the leading Indian and international creative talent, to build a new-age, future-ready global media and Entertainment Company.

The creative genius – Bachchans and the business genius – Anil will create magic and take entertainment to a different level. The joint venture and our strategy to tie up with Indian and international creative talent will help the company build a new-age global entertainment conglomerate.

Akbar Birbal remixed: A new beginning

Rajshri Media

Rajshri Media is the digital entertainment arm of the 60-year old Rajshri group, one of India’s oldest, largest and most successful Film and TV Studios. It also has successful operations in TV production and music publishing. The group has produced over 50 films till date many of which have attained significant commercial and critical success.

Rajshri Media is one of the leading Internet and Mobile Studios of India. The company runs India’s leading broadband video streaming and download portal http://www.rajshri.com their Internet and Mobile videos are also available at their Youtube channel – http://www.youtube.com/rajshri.

Akbar Birbal remixed: A new beginning

Gone are the days of TV serials; its age of Internet and mobile serials. Rajshri Media, India’s leading Web and Mobile Studio, has launched Akbar Birbal remixed. The Akbar Birbal remixed is 3 minute a piece 90 episode series. The Akbar Birbal remixed, set in the by-lanes of Bhendi Bazar in Mumbai.

The show revolves around a loud and brazen don – Akbar Anna, and his intelligent , witty and ever-bankable sidekick – Birbal Bhaiya. Each day, to them, begins with it a new nut to crack. Doesn’t it sound like Akbar-Birbal, and Muna Bhai – Circuit combination? The first 10 episodes are live on http://www.rajshri.com and their Youtube channel which is http://www.youtube.com/rajshri. In addition, it will be launched soon on MMS and SMS via Idea Cellular.

Rajshri would reformat the content for audio and text and will be distributing it to Idea for 3 months, thereafter going live across other operators. The content will be released initially on Internet and mobile and subsequently formatted for TV, home video and Radio.

Colors of Viacom 18

Cable television market in India is at present dominated by foreign-owned operators, including Star TV, and Sony, and several large domestic broadcasters, such as Zee, Sun TV, and Sahara. The industry in the recent past has seen new players entering the market, or new partners embarking on the joint venture. The change will lead to a period of fierce competition and consolidation in the months to come.

The joint Venture

The United States based Viacom, which owns Hollywood studios such as Paramount and DreamWorks. And television channels such as MTV, VH1 and Nickleodeon and the Indian company TV-18 which runs Indian business channels such as CNBC-TV18 and has a stake in Global Broadcast News, which operates English news channel CNN-IBN on May 2007 entered into joint venture. The 50-50 joint venture – Viacom-18, would set up an entertainment company that will be involved in television, films, and digital media. To the joint venture Viacom has contributed its channels in India – MTV, Nickleodeon and VH1, along with some capital to the venture, while TV-18 is transferring Studio18, it’s production, distribution, home video and music co to the joint venture.

First Launch

The Viacom’s inherent creativity and Network18’s operational excellence make a potent combination that places Viacom18 in an enviable position in the Indian entertainment space. This is evident from the pre launch campaign of the general entertainment channel – Color. This will be the 10th Hindi general entertainment channel on Indian television.

Viacom 18 has announced the launch its first Hindi general entertainment channel – Colors in July this year. The launch is one of the 100 new TV channels which are scheduled for launch in India this year. The launch of COLORS will make Viacom18 one of the strongest entertainment Networks in India. Viacom18 already reaches out to millions of viewers through its TV and filmed entertainment offerings via MTV, Nick, VH1 and other news channel such as CNN-IBN, CNBC-TV18 which are industry leading brands in their respective spaces.

The cluttered TV channel market where the total number of channels on air set to hit 700 by 2009 will be forced to slash advertising rates and spend heavily on improving technology. The new launches would deliver the content to ever smaller audiences, nudging up their cost of distribution and marketing. The new channels need innovative program planning, strong nation wide distribution, great launch, and image differentiation. Commenting on the launch Rajesh Kamat, CEO, Colors, says, “We have worked on the 3Ds – distribution, differentiation and disruption. Distribution will be key for the channel for the initial sampling among viewers. We plan to have Differentiated scheduling of programmes, which will play an important role in its success.” To read the story please read: Viacom18 to Launch ‘COLORS’, GE Channel in Hindi

Colours: New General Entertainment Channel from Viacom 18

Latest addition in the cluttered general entertainment channel space is Colors. It is the 50:50 joint venture between Viacom Inc and the Network 18 Group. With the launch of Colors, Viacom 18 will complete its bouquet in the Indian market after its slew of niche channels such as MTV, Vh1 and Nick. Colors will reach out to a wider audience which normally comes from the general entertainment channel genre.

Colors: Ensuring Success

The programming in the cluttered general entertainment channel space is the key to its success. There is stiff competition in the space and key to success is differentiated and disruptive in our battle for eyeballs.

Positioning the channel in the cluttered space is not an easy task. The Viacom 18 management knows positioning has to be different and disruptive to make its presence felt. No wonder Viacom 18 has an innovative positioning strategy – disruptive positioning. It has chosen Bangkok as the backdrop and roped in Akshay Kumar to launch its flagship show – definitely innovative and disruptive move.

The launch vehicle, Akshay Kumar is the anchor of its reality show Fear Factor – Khatron Ke Khiladi. Akshay Kumarhas been roped in to build excitement among viewers and capture the required eyeballs. Apart from Khatron Ke Khiladi, with Akshay Kumar and 13 Bollywood actresses, Colors has announced its initial flagship shows – Mohe Rang De, a love story set against the backdrop of the Quit India Movement Azaadi Ke Rang or Bollywood ke Range. These programming has been linked to the emotions of Indian people. These programs also depict the name of the channel Colors. The name Colors is also reflective of the country’s myriad emotions.

Impact on the general entertainment channel

The stalwarts in the general entertainment channel space, like Zee, Sony and Star, remain unruffled by the entry of new players. The new entrants in the general entertainment channel space viz. 9X, NDTV Imagine, will be able to survive purely on the merit of their content. The success of any general entertainment channel channel will depend on how well it differentiates itself from the rest. In the current market scenario when soaps and reality shows are dominating the general entertainment channel channels, differentiation will be tough.

Currently, general entertainment channel advertising revenues are estimated at Rs 2,000 crore with Star and Zee bagging the maximum share in this space. Color, piggyback on strong brand equity of Viacom 18 and patronage of its other channels would ensure faster penetration for a general entertainment channel space.