Bhuma Shrivastava: Catch a Star

BACKSTAGE

Years of yoga and eclectic reading by Vikram Kaushik, the managing director and chief executive officer of Tata Sky, would have come in very handy.

When the 80:20 joint venture between the Tata Group and the Star Group launched its direct-to-home broadcast on August 8, it marked the culmination of an arduous nine-year effort that kicked off with Rupert Murdoch-controlled Star giving a demonstration of the technology, new at that time, to a select audience in Delhi on March 26, 1997.

The campaign, dubbed by some as the longest DTH gestation, meandered through several bureaucratic delays, including a ban, lifted subsequently, by the government on KU band transmission, the cornerstone of DTH.

"Media is a very sensitive area for most governments. Besides, the fact that DTH would have changed the face of television distribution, it was also bringing in investors with deep pockets like the Tatas. A lot of people were very nervous about it," says Kaushik with a Zen-like calm, which, his contemporaries claim, is characteristic of him.

For two years, the government inquired into the source of funds, their utilisation, the nature of the joint venture agreement even as Dish TV, the DTH platform of arch rival Zee, took off three years ago.

Says Kaushik, reprising the Buddha: "Sometimes it is better to be the second player. You learn from the mistakes of the first."

Incidentally, homeopathy, which takes its own sweet time to deliver results, is one of his interests.

A graduate in history from Delhi's St. Stephen's, who went on to do his masters in the subject and also had a short teaching stint, Kaushik started his corporate career in 1973, joining Hindustan Lever.

After 16 years in HLL's marketing and sales, he took over as the managing director of ad agency Enterprise. Four years later, he was back pushing fast moving consumer goods off the shelves as the vice president, marketing, with Britannia. In 2000, he joined Colgate Palmolive as director, marketing.

"Selling DTH as a concept to consumers is a marketing plus advertising challenge, the availability of set-top boxes is a 'distribution' issue and DTH, ultimately, is history in the making," muses Kaushik. He foresees the digital format of television garnering over 15 million subscribers in four years.

Content exclusivity on DTH is not allowed in India, but Kaushik sees light at the end of the tunnel. Globally, 15-20 per cent of the content is exclusive to each provider and the government could allow that kind of a partial exclusivity.

Tata Sky is currently pinning its hopes on Star's successful channels, like Star Plus, besides extensive customer service, to carve a niche.