 | | Lalit
Modi: Cricket Caliph |
3
Lalit Modi & Kunal Dasgupta: Lalit
Modi has been given many monikers but the one that suits him best is Cricket Caliph.
The bespectacled scion of the KK Modi empire struggled to set up a media empire
in the nineties - partnering companies such as Disney. His company Modi Entertainment
Network helped launch sports channel ESPN in India, apart from distributing Disney
programming across TV channels. Other partnerships followed but none sustained
themselves, and his plans of a media empire crumbled. But
not one to give up easily, he turned his attention to cricket gradually moving
up the ranks in the cricketing administration after gaining the trust of Sharad
Pawar. And then came the big bang: the idea to create a cricket league with business
houses being allowed to own teams and players being traded like the baseball league
in the US. And thus was born the Indian Premier League, a tournament which has
since gone on to become a runaway success.  |
| Kunal
Dasgupta: The Fighter |
Sony
Entertainment Television CEO Kunal Dasgupta could well have been a pugilist. The
salt pepper bearded executive probably has taken more knockout punches than any
other executive in his 12-year-old stint with Sony. But he has always managed
to regain his balance and get into the ring again. Even as the Indian promoters
and majority owner Sony Pictures arm wrestled on divesting the company's equity,
he gambled with the IPL rights paying in excess of a billion dollars for 10 years.
In retrospect it seems like the right decision, because the IPL has taken the
country and the cricketing world by storm and looks likely to rake in a lot of
advertising dollars. The
IPL success has taken sports and movie channel Max into the number one revenue
earner status in the MultiScreen Media scheme of things even as GEC Sony Entertainment
waddles in No 4 and No 5 territory among GEC channels. Now Dasgupta
has to
replicate that success with Sony Entertainment Television. Just like he did in
the late nineties when he gave market leader Zee TV a major fright.  |
| Punit
Goenka: Going great guns! |
4
Punit Goenka- The elder son of homegrown media mogul Subhash Chandra is
proving to be a chip off the old block. He came into his own in 2008 taking over
as CEO of Zeel. Groomed
as the successor to Chandra, Goenka rejuvenated Zee TV, the main revenue earner
for Zeel, and brought it within striking distance of market leader Star Plus. Zee
also emerged as a formidable player in the regional markets outside the southern
region, with Marathi and Bengali general entertainment channels independently
clocking revenues close to Rs 1 billion.
His
greatest contribution has been stabilizing Zee TV and ensuring
continuity at a time when CEO Pradeep Guha departed during
the year. Long standing Zee TV professionals such as Bharat
Kumar Ranga, Nitin Vaidya, Joy Chakraborthy, Neil Chakravarti,
Hitesh Vakil, and Himanshu Mody have stayed on with the group
and Goenka's focus is currently on further strengthening Zee
Network's position as the largest broadcast network in the
country along with the same team.
Additionally,
his new drives include film production, an area Zee had fled from after suffering
losses due to revenue leakages in the distribution chain. Goenka
was also recently asked to nurse Zee News Ltd, the company that houses news and
regional language channels. The distribution companies - Dish TV and Wire &
Wireless India - are still kept outside his direct supervision.  |
| Sameer
Manchanda: Behind the scenes man |
5
Sameer Manchanda:
Sameer Manchanda is a low profile backend professional turned entrepreneur who
has been seeding ventures in cable distribution after striking success with the
Network18 group's news channels CNN-IBN and IBN7. He sprang into the limelight
a couple of years ago when he parted ways with NDTV to set up CNN-IBN in partnership
with Network18 promoter Raghav Bahl and celebrated NDTV journalist Rajdeep Sardesai.
He followed that up with a successful public issue, using the moolah to acquire
Channel 7 and renamed it IBN7. The
year 2008 saw him get into cable TV distribution in a big way with the setting
up of DEN as an MSO which would set up and acquire headends - both digital and
analogue - all over the country. He also set up Star DEN (in partnership with
the Star India group), to distribute channels to the 83 million cable TV homes
in the country. DEN has made an impact by providing cable TV services to a sizeable
chunk of the Hindi speaking market. DEN's presence in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan
and Karnataka would make old time MSOs envious.  |
| K
Jayaraman: Cable Cowboy |
6
K Jayaraman: The numbers man looks like a most unlikely candidate to run a
cable TV operation in the cutthroat Indian cable TV market. A chartered accountant,
2008 saw his vision for Hathway attracting money from private equity firms like
ChrysCapital which put in $60 million. Jayaraman
used that money to expand into Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, acquiring MSOs over
there, apart from digitizing headends and rolling out set top boxes into many
metros. Estimates are that Jayaraman's Hathway today has close to a million set
top boxes installed in Indian cable TV homes.  |
| Arnab
Goswami: Newsmaker |
7
Arnab Goswami: The bespectacled-once-Telegraph-journalist-then-NDTV anchor
has spurred the channel he heads Times Now in 2008 to greater heights. In terms
of mind space, it probably has taken up more of it among viewers than any other
English channel in the country in the past year. The
prime time news show that he anchors has become a must watch amongst English speaking
audiences all over India. His incisive questions and no holds barred interviewing
style have made him an icon for viewers. When he took up the challenge of spearheading
Times Now, it was already a late player in the news game. But that does not deter
him even as he marshalls together his resources, gradually chipping away at older
established news players' pedestals. | 
