 "<b>Lunch With BS:</b> Raj Nayak")
It is only Thursday but Raj Nayak is already looking weekend-ish in a light blue shirt. San-Qi at the Four Seasons in Mumbai is one of his favourite haunts. So that is where we settle down for what turns out to be a chatty, somewhat philosophical three-hour lunch. Nayak, 52, is in that kind of mood, I figure, when he starts by ordering a gin and tonic. In deference to a very long day ahead I stick to a spritzer. And we order prawn dumplings to go with our drinks.
Nayak, currently CEO of Colors, was with Star India for almost 10 years, starting 1993. Sometime in 1996 he was put in charge of sales and marketing at ESPN-Star Sports. He didn’t know whether it was a punishment or reward. Nobody bought sports in those days and cricket wasn’t that big. Soon after came the India tour of South Africa and West Indies. Nayak was given a target of $8 million in ad revenues. In a market where advertisers only bought India playing one-day matches how could he generate so much money from a series where Test cricket formed the bulk of the programming?
The only way to do it was to convince advertisers to buy the whole series as a package. So he threw parties for the “Safari Calypso series” in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Crocodile steak and Ostrich fillet were flown in. Many big current and former players — Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Rahul Dravid — were invited along with advertisers. Remember, those were the early days of private television, there were only a handful of channels. Nobody marketed entertainment shows, let alone Test cricket. So this was highly unusual.
By day one of the series only 10 per cent of the ad inventory had been sold. By day two it was 20 per cent and by the fifth day the entire series was sold out. The channel made $13 million in advertising from the series. The idea of buying a package was just too new for advertisers, who had resisted it. But in the who-will-blink-first war, Nayak simply held firm. It was, he says, the turning point of his life. It made him more certain of his abilities and instincts. “I was pushed into a corner and had a desire to prove myself. Adversity brings out the best in you,” he says.
Nayak is just answering my question on the turning point of his life, but to me this story is so Raj Nayak. It has the flamboyance, cheerfulness and the can-do/let-us-try-it attitude that I have come to associate with him over 15 years of knowing him. Twitter’s @rajcheerfull has a reputation for making friends even while cutting the best deals. It is an ability that has stood him in good stead: As the man who was part of The Indian Post with Vinod Mehta or the start-up team at Star India or as the founding CEO of Prannoy Roy’s NDTV Media where he set up the broadcast operations of what was till then (2003) just a news production firm. The 1990s were the formative years of the media and entertainment business in India and those friendships stayed. So did his reputation for being a great sales guy.
Nayak believes the art of selling is about creating a win-win situation. “Any relationship that is not a win-win will never last. A client might get upset with you at times when you walk away from a deal, but if you demonstrate your intent and explain why you don’t think the deal is a wise choice, they will respect you for your integrity. I find this to be true in all relationships, both personal and professional,” he says. We finally give in to the steward, who has been around four times asking if we are ready to order. Nayak takes over and orders sushi and udon noodles.
But his transformation from someone whose tag of “great salesman” almost killed senior management opportunities (especially at Star) to CEO of Colors has been in several ways the story of many professionals who rose to the top of their game in the media world. Ajay Vidyasagar (Google), Uday Shankar (Star), Sameer Nair (Balaji Telefilms), Tony D’Silva (Hinduja Media) — all of them had to grow out of slots either in distribution or content to prove their worth as CEOs. Nayak is completely at ease with this reality. “I don’t sell often now, but it still gives me a kick. If I hadn’t been successful at selling, I wouldn’t be here. Now my canvas is so much bigger, more evolved,” he says.
That it is. As the man running the biggest chunk of the entertainment business for Mukesh Ambani’s Network18, Nayak’s record so far has been nothing short of spectacular. He has refused to expand for the sake of having more channels, focusing instead on what he has. Colors and Rishtey give larger networks such as Star, Zee and Sony a run for their money by holding on to a disproportionately high viewership share. Colors is housed within Viacom18, the joint venture between the Rs 87,000-crore Viacom and the Rs 3,191-crore Network18. It is only earlier this week that it launched its third channel. Yet, at an estimated Rs 1,500 crore in top line, the Colors bouquet remains the star in the Network18 portfolio.
“NDTV Media and Aidem Ventures (a firm he set up after NDTV) gave me the platforms to test my entrepreneurial and business acumen. Colors has given me the opportunity to sink my teeth into content and build relationships with Bollywood and the talent fraternity,” he says, as we dig into some awesome sushi and wasabi.
Nayak and his team have made some interesting programming calls with shows such as Big Boss, 24 and Naagin. What, I ask, forking the eel sushi he is recommending strongly with trepidation, is the “Raj Nayak” approach to programming. “Programming in television is very dynamic; it has its own grammar. Content cannot be explained in a PowerPoint presentation,” he says. But the ratings game, he adds, is sensitive to all kinds of triggers — festivals, holidays, cricket, movie releases and competition. The eel sushi is very good so I am all ears again when he talks of pushing the envelope.
One of the big challenges of the Rs 47,500- crore Indian television business is that, “it is extremely difficult to find the right balance between creating progressive content (which often does not have high ratings) and using tried and tested formulas with the right mix of emotion and high drama (which tends to produce high ratings). The challenge is to try something new without upsetting the equilibrium,” says Nayak. And it is within those boundaries that Colors has experimented with limited-episode series such as 24 and Naagin.
It is time for dessert and the conversation turns to holidays and leisure. Not surprisingly Nayak watches a lot of TV and reads a lot. But his stress-buster, funnily, is something that is causing much stress these days — social media, “especially Twitter. I enjoy the exchange of ideas and get a sense of where people are. I treat it as a stress-buster but if you ask my wife she’ll tell you I have an addiction”.
Nayak, currently CEO of Colors, was with Star India for almost 10 years, starting 1993. Sometime in 1996 he was put in charge of sales and marketing at ESPN-Star Sports. He didn’t know whether it was a punishment or reward. Nobody bought sports in those days and cricket wasn’t that big. Soon after came the India tour of South Africa and West Indies. Nayak was given a target of $8 million in ad revenues. In a market where advertisers only bought India playing one-day matches how could he generate so much money from a series where Test cricket formed the bulk of the programming?
The only way to do it was to convince advertisers to buy the whole series as a package. So he threw parties for the “Safari Calypso series” in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Crocodile steak and Ostrich fillet were flown in. Many big current and former players — Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Rahul Dravid — were invited along with advertisers. Remember, those were the early days of private television, there were only a handful of channels. Nobody marketed entertainment shows, let alone Test cricket. So this was highly unusual.
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Nobody bought it. And the complaints from advertisers went up to the head office in Hong Kong, which said that if this didn’t work, Nayak would lose his job. “I couldn’t sleep,” he remembers, lifting his dumpling effortlessly with chopsticks. (Chopstick-challenged me sticks to forking them.)
By day one of the series only 10 per cent of the ad inventory had been sold. By day two it was 20 per cent and by the fifth day the entire series was sold out. The channel made $13 million in advertising from the series. The idea of buying a package was just too new for advertisers, who had resisted it. But in the who-will-blink-first war, Nayak simply held firm. It was, he says, the turning point of his life. It made him more certain of his abilities and instincts. “I was pushed into a corner and had a desire to prove myself. Adversity brings out the best in you,” he says.
Nayak is just answering my question on the turning point of his life, but to me this story is so Raj Nayak. It has the flamboyance, cheerfulness and the can-do/let-us-try-it attitude that I have come to associate with him over 15 years of knowing him. Twitter’s @rajcheerfull has a reputation for making friends even while cutting the best deals. It is an ability that has stood him in good stead: As the man who was part of The Indian Post with Vinod Mehta or the start-up team at Star India or as the founding CEO of Prannoy Roy’s NDTV Media where he set up the broadcast operations of what was till then (2003) just a news production firm. The 1990s were the formative years of the media and entertainment business in India and those friendships stayed. So did his reputation for being a great sales guy.
Nayak believes the art of selling is about creating a win-win situation. “Any relationship that is not a win-win will never last. A client might get upset with you at times when you walk away from a deal, but if you demonstrate your intent and explain why you don’t think the deal is a wise choice, they will respect you for your integrity. I find this to be true in all relationships, both personal and professional,” he says. We finally give in to the steward, who has been around four times asking if we are ready to order. Nayak takes over and orders sushi and udon noodles.
But his transformation from someone whose tag of “great salesman” almost killed senior management opportunities (especially at Star) to CEO of Colors has been in several ways the story of many professionals who rose to the top of their game in the media world. Ajay Vidyasagar (Google), Uday Shankar (Star), Sameer Nair (Balaji Telefilms), Tony D’Silva (Hinduja Media) — all of them had to grow out of slots either in distribution or content to prove their worth as CEOs. Nayak is completely at ease with this reality. “I don’t sell often now, but it still gives me a kick. If I hadn’t been successful at selling, I wouldn’t be here. Now my canvas is so much bigger, more evolved,” he says.
That it is. As the man running the biggest chunk of the entertainment business for Mukesh Ambani’s Network18, Nayak’s record so far has been nothing short of spectacular. He has refused to expand for the sake of having more channels, focusing instead on what he has. Colors and Rishtey give larger networks such as Star, Zee and Sony a run for their money by holding on to a disproportionately high viewership share. Colors is housed within Viacom18, the joint venture between the Rs 87,000-crore Viacom and the Rs 3,191-crore Network18. It is only earlier this week that it launched its third channel. Yet, at an estimated Rs 1,500 crore in top line, the Colors bouquet remains the star in the Network18 portfolio.
“NDTV Media and Aidem Ventures (a firm he set up after NDTV) gave me the platforms to test my entrepreneurial and business acumen. Colors has given me the opportunity to sink my teeth into content and build relationships with Bollywood and the talent fraternity,” he says, as we dig into some awesome sushi and wasabi.
Nayak and his team have made some interesting programming calls with shows such as Big Boss, 24 and Naagin. What, I ask, forking the eel sushi he is recommending strongly with trepidation, is the “Raj Nayak” approach to programming. “Programming in television is very dynamic; it has its own grammar. Content cannot be explained in a PowerPoint presentation,” he says. But the ratings game, he adds, is sensitive to all kinds of triggers — festivals, holidays, cricket, movie releases and competition. The eel sushi is very good so I am all ears again when he talks of pushing the envelope.
One of the big challenges of the Rs 47,500- crore Indian television business is that, “it is extremely difficult to find the right balance between creating progressive content (which often does not have high ratings) and using tried and tested formulas with the right mix of emotion and high drama (which tends to produce high ratings). The challenge is to try something new without upsetting the equilibrium,” says Nayak. And it is within those boundaries that Colors has experimented with limited-episode series such as 24 and Naagin.
It is time for dessert and the conversation turns to holidays and leisure. Not surprisingly Nayak watches a lot of TV and reads a lot. But his stress-buster, funnily, is something that is causing much stress these days — social media, “especially Twitter. I enjoy the exchange of ideas and get a sense of where people are. I treat it as a stress-buster but if you ask my wife she’ll tell you I have an addiction”.