Six roles, from counting viewers to deciding where they go next

Mandate

Set out where a promoter-led regional broadcaster should grow as viewing moves to streaming, and bring pricing discipline to acquisitions, rights and partnerships.

Outcomes

• Acquired Ghatmatha Entertainment for ₹465 Cr in 2022; its revenue rose from ₹128 Cr to ₹236 Cr and its Marathi viewing share from 18 to 24 per cent by 2025–26.
• Introduced viewing-hour pricing for films; film-rights spending fell from ₹310 Cr to ₹246 Cr by 2023–24 while hours watched from films rose 9 per cent.
• Negotiated a ₹168 Cr co-commissioning agreement with a global streaming service, with all rights returning after two years.
• Grew Ilavenil Play from 0.9 million to 2.3 million paying subscriptions, about half of them through broadband and mobile bundles.
• Reduced advertising's share of revenue from 54 to 43 per cent while total revenue rose from ₹1,720 Cr to ₹2,460 Cr.

Decisions in context

I became chief strategy officer in April 2021, three years after joining Ilavenil to run corporate development and distribution strategy. The managing director's brief was direct: viewing was moving to phones, advertising was becoming less dependable, and the company had grown for more than twenty-five years on Tamil and Telugu television without a written view of where it should go next. I built a strategy office of thirty-four people from a corporate development team of twelve, adding audience research and a partnerships unit. Three of the four decisions on my Impact page belong to this role: film rights priced by viewing hours, the purchase of Ghatmatha Entertainment and the co-commissioning agreement with a global streaming service. Revenue grew from ₹1,720 crore in 2020–21 to ₹2,460 crore in 2025–26, while the share earned from advertising fell from 54 to 43 per cent. I attend the board for strategy, acquisitions and major partnerships, and I have been a director of Ghatmatha since the acquisition.

Reason for the move

Current role. Not seeking an executive move; considering one independent directorship with the Ilavenil board's consent.

Mandate

Prepare the company's channel pricing and distribution agreements for TRAI's new tariff framework, and build a corporate development function.

Outcomes

• Declared prices for nine pay channels and six bouquets before the framework took effect in early 2019.
• Renegotiated agreements with 14 direct-to-home, cable and broadband platforms; subscription revenue rose from ₹470 Cr to ₹690 Cr.
• Screened 11 acquisition candidates and recommended against all of them, including two later sold to rivals at prices we judged too high.
• Moved Ilavenil Play from a free, advertising-funded app to a paid service in 2019.

Decisions in context

I joined Ilavenil in February 2018 with one urgent task. TRAI's new tariff framework for broadcasting and cable services would require every pay channel to carry a declared price and let viewers choose channels individually or in bouquets, and nobody yet knew how households would choose. My team of twelve modelled the likely choices language by language, using our own research and the diary methods I had learnt at Lokmanas. We declared prices for nine pay channels and six bouquets and renegotiated agreements with fourteen platforms. Subscription revenue rose from ₹470 crore in 2017–18 to ₹690 crore in 2020–21, though some of the rise came from price changes across the industry rather than our own choices. I also built the corporate development function, screening eleven candidates and recommending none, and argued for turning Ilavenil Play into a paid service in 2019.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief strategy officer when the managing director created the role.

Mandate

Grow the tower portfolio through acquisitions and new tenancies, and from 2015 lead strategy and contracts with tenant operators.

Outcomes

• Led the ₹1,050 Cr acquisition of 2,300 towers from a regional operator in 2014.
• Helped raise the tenancy ratio from 1.6 to 1.9 between 2012 and 2016 through co-location sales.
• Negotiated the 2017 settlement of 6,900 tenancy exits: ₹310 Cr of exit charges and 4,100 new 4G tenancies with ten-year commitments.

Decisions in context

I joined Varanya Towers in August 2012 to build its corporate development team. The company owned about 13,000 towers and was growing by persuading more operators to share each one, so the tenancy ratio mattered more than any other figure. In 2014 I led the purchase of 2,300 towers from a regional operator that wanted to release capital for spectrum, at ₹1,050 crore. From 2015 I also led strategy and the master service agreements with our six tenant operators, which gave me a seat in every renewal. The consolidation that followed a new operator's arrival in 2016 tested everything in those agreements. My settlement with the merging operators gave up part of our exit charges in return for new 4G tenancies, and it is described on my Impact page. I left in January 2018 to return to the audiences where my career began.

Reason for the move

Wanted to return to content and audiences, and was invited to rebuild a regional broadcaster's distribution strategy.

Mandate

Build the firm's research coverage of Indian media and telecom companies.

Outcomes

• Initiated and maintained coverage of 14 listed broadcasters, publishers, distributors and telecom operators.
• Published the firm's analysis of the 2010 third-generation spectrum auction and its effect on operators' balance sheets.
• Built a model of cable digitisation's effect on broadcasters' subscription income, used by the firm's clients from 2011.

Decisions in context

I joined Dhavalgiri Securities in September 2006 as its first analyst dedicated to media and telecom, and was promoted to senior analyst in 2009, when two associates joined me. Over six years I covered fourteen listed companies: broadcasters, newspaper publishers, cable distributors and mobile operators. The period was unusually eventful. The 2010 auction of third-generation spectrum changed operators' balance sheets, and the phased digitisation of cable television from 2012 promised broadcasters a fairer share of subscription income. My model of that shift was used by the firm's clients from 2011. The work taught me to state every assumption, to publish a view that could be proved wrong and to read the accounts behind management's commentary. It also showed me that I preferred making decisions to forecasting other people's, and in 2012 I moved into corporate development.

Reason for the move

Wanted to take decisions rather than forecast them, and moved into corporate development at a tower company.

Mandate

Open a Chennai office and build audience research in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

Outcomes

• Built a viewing-diary panel of 2,400 households across eight southern cities.
• Completed about 40 studies for broadcasters, advertisers and their agencies.
• Grew the regional office's revenue from a standing start to about ₹7 Cr a year by 2006.

Decisions in context

In April 2003 Lokmanas sent me to Chennai to open its first regional office. The firm's clients were beginning to ask why southern audiences behaved so differently from the Hindi-speaking homes it knew well, and nobody in Mumbai could answer. I recruited nine researchers and about sixty field interviewers and built a viewing-diary panel of 2,400 households in eight cities across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Over three years we completed about forty studies for broadcasters, advertisers and agencies, and the office grew to about ₹7 crore of annual revenue. I learnt working Tamil, and I learnt that language shaped viewing more than income, age or city size did. That observation became the starting point of the argument I now make about depth within a language.

Reason for the move

Wanted to understand how audiences became revenue and profit, and moved to equity research.

Mandate

Design and run household surveys and viewing diaries for television clients.

Outcomes

• Ran about 60 household surveys and diary studies in Marathi-, Gujarati- and Hindi-speaking homes.
• Introduced a follow-up interview that tested diary entries against what households recalled watching.
• Wrote the firm's first report on how cable operators' channel choices shaped viewing in smaller towns.

Decisions in context

I joined Lokmanas in June 2000, straight from my management diploma, as a research executive in its television studies team. Most of my working hours were spent in other people's living rooms in Thane, Nashik, Pune and Surat, explaining viewing diaries to families and returning a week later to collect them. I ran about sixty studies in three years. The most useful thing I introduced was a short follow-up interview that compared diary entries with what households remembered watching, which showed how often diaries recorded what families intended to watch rather than what they did. I also wrote the firm's first report on how local cable operators' choices of channels shaped viewing in smaller towns, a subject that returned to my working life twice: in equity research and at Ilavenil. In 2003 the firm asked me to open its Chennai office.

Reason for the move

Promoted to open the firm's regional-languages office in Chennai.