MUMBAI: It’s looking at a brighter 2010. Mumbai-hqed Bright Outdoor Media is pushing for a 15-20 per cent revenue growth in the coming year.

The company expects 50 per cent of this revenue to come from its BEST (Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport Undertaking) business, the advertising rights of which it acquired recently for the period 2010 to 2013.
 
Says Bright Outdoor CMD Yogesh Lakhani, “We had bid very aggressively for the BEST tender and won it through a Rs 1.23 billion bid for a three-year period (2010-2013). This includes 4605 single–decker buses and 125 double-decker buses.”

Earlier, the BEST advertising rights business was held by Pioneer Publicity which had paid Rs 700 million for the period 2004-2010 for approximately 3200 BEST buses.

Lakhani says the higher bid has forced him to revise advertising rates by 10-15 per cent. Elaborates Lakhani, “We need to do this to get a return on our investment. Currently, we service approximately 600 clients in Mumbai, out of which 150 are corporates while others are local players.”
 
The BEST contract, informs Lakhani, will kick start from 1 April 2010. Lakhani expects TV channel and programme advertising to account for a majority of the spaces (vacancies), followed by pan masala brands, Bollywood releases and the banking sector, not necessarily in that order.

“GECs are expected to contribute about 5 per cent of the total revenue coming from BEST,” he says.
 
According to a source in the company, while branding on the back panel of a BEST bus is priced at Rs 8,000 for a month, the left panel is priced at Rs 4,500 for a month. The right panel is priced at Rs 5,500 for a month and a full double decker bus is priced at Rs 65,000 a month.

Bright Outdoor Media, which presently operates in Mumbai, Goa and Pune, plans to barge into the Delhi outdoors in the next six months. It owns and operates around 1500 hoardings in Mumbai city, of which 85 per cent are occupied currently, claims Lakhani. Luck sure tends to favour Lakhani.