Creative continuum: Nair narrates a journey that shaped Indian media market

Nair tells how various industries - devices, payments, telecom - have created the perfect storm in the media business

Sameer Nair loves his food. The last time I had lunch at his office, the 54-year old CEO of Applause Entertainment had ordered some awesome mutton and chicken dishes from The Bori Kitchen. This time we agree that his secretary would book us at a place he fancies. And that is how I land up at Boteco in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex one Wednesday afternoon. Just as I am settling in, Nair walks in from his office next door. We start discussing food immediately. He’s ravenous because he’s skipped breakfast for our early lunch. He orders a carne na pedra or thin slices of steak and a side dish of pork sausages with tapioca chunks. I go for the pato assado do boteco or roasted Peking duck. He quaffs a Coke and I sip on hot water as we start talking shop. 

Nair’s chuffed about getting the rights to make the Indian version of the popular Israeli show Fauda. Applause, the Aditya Birla Group’s entertainment arm, had been defunct for some years. So when Nair bumped into chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla in 2016 and mentioned that his contract (as group CEO) with Balaji Telefilms was coming to an end and he might do stuff on his own, Birla snapped him up. Very few people in the business combine an instinct for content with a firm grip on its costing, the broader business scenario and a huge network of relationships within the creative ecosystem the way Nair does. He is erudite, watches huge amounts of cinema and shows and is totally with whatever is happening. 

There seems some cosmic correctness at work here: The man most identified with getting Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) and the saas-bahu serials to Indian TV screens, one who ran its largest broadcaster Star India, is now applying his mind to bringing the most disruptive and cutting edge shows online. His journey on the creative continuum that has shaped the Indian media market and audience tastes, continues. 

Nair joined Applause in 2017 with the broad idea to build a content company. So far seven Applause shows such as Hello Mini and Hostages have dropped online. Another six are in post-production and many others including films and short form content are in various stages of development. Interestingly enough, the first set of Applause’s shows such as Criminal Justice (based on a BBC show) and The Office began streaming on Hotstar, owned by Disney’s Star India. Star is Nair’s old home, the firm where he came into his own, found fame, fortune and of course, Amitabh Bachchan. 

The food arrives. Nair starts cooking his steak on the hot stone and offers me his tapioca chips. The duck is good but the portion is huge. Nair happily takes a piece of it while I try one of the thinly sliced steaks. The chomping and chewing is interrupted only by our deep dive into the past. 

It was in August 2000 while waiting for Bachchan on the sets of (then Star India’s) KBC at Filmcity in Mumbai that I first met Nair. An easygoing chap he’d done everything from selling yellow pages to making ad films before he joined as a producer-director for interstitials for Star Movies in 1994. Interstitials are pieces of content that fill the breaks during a film. He reckons he would have made behind-the-scenes kind of stuff that included interviews with stars for about 200 films. That is when his early friendships and network in the film and creative industry were formed. Soon he became head of promos and presentation for Star Plus, the flagship channel and also handled movie acquisition. But he was always on the fringes of the system. 

He soon grew restless. “In February 1999 I was like ‘this is too much, what am I doing, I want to be a director’. I had a movie idea and even set up a time to meet Mr Bachchan on a Friday morning at 11 am. But I couldn’t go because I got promoted to programming head that day. One year later when I took KBC to him, he said what happened to the movie script you wanted to show me,” he laughs. As programming head Nair kicked off a lot of shows that were “much appreciated and applauded but got us no ratings”, he says. There was Rajdhani, a political drama a la House of Cards. There were the Star Bestsellers, one-hour films from directors who now rank among India’s biggest — Imtiaz Ali and Rajkumar Hirani among others. Star Plus did comedy, fiction, and talk shows. However, nothing hit the big time. 

For nine years after it entered India, Star struggled. It had the odd success in Channel [V] or Star News but despite being one of the earliest entrants, rivals Zee and Sony had run away with the game. After its divorce from Zee in 1999, Star was finally free to do Hindi programming. It needed a show that would cut across age groups, socio-economic barriers and get India together as if it was the “India-Pakistan cricket final”, as (then) CEO Peter Mukerjea put it in his brief to the team. 

Nair, all of 34 then, was key to this transformation. He zeroed in on KBC, Siddhartha Basu and insisted on having Bachchan as the host though it took three months to convince him. KBC hit the TV industry like a tsunami. Nair quickly followed that with daily soaps, an unknown quantity during primetime then. Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii among others took off and Star dominated the rating charts for six long years. That is the base on which it went on to become India’s largest media firm long after Nair left in 2007 to set up Imagine TV. 

When KBC hit the screens, India was at 70 million TV homes, about half of which were watching cable and satellite TV. Today more than 95 per cent of India’s 197 million TV homes use cable and satellite. That is over 800 million people. Add about 600 million (who may or may not own a TV) who have broadband enabled phones. Isn’t this a whole new ball game? “One big difference since the early 90s is, then we were creating content, throwing the cables, building distribution, content and even the ad industry. Today distribution is in place, the whole e-commerce industry has built a degree of trust so people are happy to buy video online. Therefore various industries — devices, payments, telecom — have created the perfect storm,” points out Nair. 

We are on the last few bites of duck and steak. There is an air of contentment around the table when we ask for the dessert menu. We decide to share a coffee panna cotta along with cappuccinos. 

How does he feel about being in this new world, knowing that he has been there at the birthing of the old one? “This is not a new world for me... storytelling has always been around. Even before KBC there were weekly dramas like Saans or Tu Tu Main Main. These (online dramas) too are like weekly dramas but they are made together and binged on. Netflix was a great distribution idea (not content). From 2000 onwards India skewed towards the daily soap opera and that killed fiction. Now OTT is bringing it back,” he reckons. “A drama series is like three-four movies. You want to work with better actors, writers, directors and all of it is on location. In TV you air an episode and it is gone. Drama sits on the platform,” he adds. So does a lot of other content like talk shows that “the rise of news channels had destroyed”, he says.

What does this Sameer Nair with all that he knows and has seen bring to the table? “I bring what I have learnt. I have worked with wonderful teams on the creative side. Success or failure is the outcome, the process of creation is fun. I work well with people. And one thing I do is decide — good or bad — I decide. I am not a deer caught in the headlights. In a crisis, I will step up and say that this was my decision. The creative business is like clay on a wheel, you have to keep your hands on it, tapping and touching. If you let go the clay will fall apart,” says Nair. 

After a meal like that, it is holding myself together for the rest of the day that worries me. Nair however is raring to go to his next meeting as we bid adieu.