A winning ace on a hard court

LUNCH WITH BS: Ravi Krishnan

IMG/TWI South Asia MD Ravi Krishnan tells how the sports and lifestyle marketing firm made it big in India.

Ravi Krishnan, 36, managing director of IMG/ TWI in South Asia, is not a conventional CEO. Not only has he played cricket with Sharne Warne for almost four years, but also participated in the Australian Open Juniors.

We could have mistaken him for an athlete as we shake hands with Krishnan at the Taj Mahal Hotel lobby in south Mumbai. He is wearing a blue check shirt with an open collar that reveals a black thread around his neck.

"Have you been to the fabulous Japanese restaurant before?" he asks us as we take the spiralling staircase to the upper deck of Wasabi, which overlooks the Arabian Sea.

Wasabi has a rather unconventional sitting arrangement. At the centre, there are high tables and one requires the help of waiters to sit on the chairs. As we settle down, Krishnan "" evidently a regular client "" volunteers to guide us on what dishes to order.

To start with, he opts for Chinese tea, while we go for iced tea. A Tamilian from Australia, Krishnan checks out whether we are game for sushi and beef.

Since we do not show much enthusiasm, Krishnan orders rock shrimp tempura, white fish carpaccio and stemmed chicken as starters and assures us that we will not be disappointed.

He has been responsible for many of IMG's "" the world's best-known sports marketing company "" big sponsorship deals and some really big events in India over the past one decade.

Krishan was part of the four-member team that was sent to India in 1995. How did it all start, we are curious to know.

"Both my parents are doctors, but I decided to study law. I was working at Clayton Utz, the largest corporate law firm in Australia. I enjoyed studying law but not practising it," says Krishan, narrating his switch from law to marketing.

He is a good raconteur. Even before the starters arrive, his story makes up for a good appetiser.

He left the law firm in 1994, and went on a world tour to find a job that suits him. He took tennis coaching assignments in Malaysia and Israel and even taught English in Korea.

While coaching at Club Med in Malaysia, he met one of his old friends who happened to know a top shot at IMG in London, the agency which was then planning to set up operations in India.

In May 1995, he met the IMG brass in London dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt "" his world tour wasn't over yet, he was travelling around without any formal clothes.

He was selected, and by October 1995, he was in India setting up shop for IMG.

At 27, Krishnan "" the youngest member of the team "" started by selling hospitality for the 1996 Cricket World Cup. "It was quite an experience. Our responsibility was to sell Indian hospitality "" beautiful venues, five-star accommodation facilities "" to overseas cricket lovers as well as to organise advertisements. But we had no idea of any Indian company interested in sponsoring cricket. So, we sat with a list of top 200 Indian companies and approached each of them with new ideas. It was a great experience...," Krishnan says putting the last bit of white fish carpaccio in his mouth, deftly using chopsticks.

He seems to be enjoying his food as much as his professional success. "Are you hungry?" he suddenly asks us. "If you are, we could order something more sumptuous. Otherwise, we can settle for steamed rice and chicken," he says.

We go with his choice "" Chilean sea bass with ginger and hot oil, and steamed rice with chicken teriyakin.

We continue talking about the progress of IMG in India. The first big break for Krishnan came with the Sahara Cup "" the one-day Indo-Pak cricket series in Toronto in 1996.

"That was a big off-shore event. We could tell the world that even Toronto can be a venue for big cricket," he declares with a touch of pride.

That led to the Rs 100-crore sponsorship deal between Sahara and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for the Indian cricket team, replacing ITC as the official sponsor. This was the largest cricket team deal ever.

However, cricket is just one of the sports that IMG is dabbling in in India. It is heavily into golf (for the last seven years it has been managing the Indian Open Golf) and tennis (the Chennai Open, the Royal Challenge Indian Open, formerly the Wills Indian Open) and even fashion.

It has also been organising the Lakme India Fashion Week for the past few years.

We ask him how he brokered the deals. Does he reach out to clients with ideas, or do the clients ask him to tailor-make events for them?

"It varies from event to event. For instance, the Fashion Designer Council of India had the idea of a fashion week. We roped in Lakme to sponsor it. There are other instances where we were asked to conceptualise an event as a brand-building exercise," Krishnan points out.

Do companies really benefit from these events, we ask him. "I was told Lakme's sales went up by 26 per cent after its association with the fashion week," says Krishnan.

IMG was also instrumental in bringing in Vijay Singh and Nick Faldo, international golf stars, to India. But when it comes to sponsoring individuals, IMG seems to have failed in making any headway.

After all, Rahul Bose, Madhavan and Murali Karthik are not in the league of Shahrukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar. Krishnan says he is working hard and there could be a few surprises soon "" he refuses to divulge more.

"We have signed a deal with an international celebrity to endorse an Indian product," he says, but politely declines to talk about IMG's turnover in India and the profit margin.

"From four people operating from a hotel room 10 years ago, we now have a team of 50. Our focus is on fashion, tennis and golf," says Krishnan.

As we wait for the desserts "" a combo of three ice creams: green tea, white pepper and cream cheese "" we ask him about some of the leading Indians in the sponsorship and modelling business.

Isn't Amitabh Bachchan, who is endorsing almost everything under the sun, over exposed? Krishnan does not share our sentiment and feels that Amitabh's son Abhishek, can do much more. "After the Versa ad, we don't see him at all," he says.

He thinks Saif Ali, Lara Dutta and Bipasha Basu work when it comes to endorsing products. On Aishwarya Rai, his take is: "The amount of publicity she gets is disproportionate to her box-office record."

His favourite cricketers in the endorsement game are Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Rahul Dravid. "Sourav Ganguly's endorsement value has been on the low, but he can do miracles after retirement," he says.

He also feels that Grand Master Viswanathan Anand has got the right potential to be a successful brand ambassador but he is not managed well and footballer Baichung Bhutia has "missed the bus".

As we mix and match the three ice cream scoops, we ask him whether Indian cricketers are over exposed because of the endorsements.

"Certainly not. They play more cricket than the cricketers of any other country. They are great icons. By nature, Indians always look for heroes. Cricketers will always be in demand," he says.

We ask him about IMG's future plans in India. He reveals that the company is betting big on television. TWI, a subsidiary of IMG, is engaged in production of sports events for TV and Krishnan oversees the rights and production business.

"In the beginning, the TV business accounted for 70 per cent of our turnover in India and the rest came from events management. Now, it is the reverse. We want to make it 60:40," he says.

TWI is changing itself from a production company of sports events to an entertainment company with a lot of focus on non-sports reality shows and entertainment. As we get up to leave, Krishnan predicts that TV channels will soon enter a consolidation phase.

"There are just too many channels "" some of them may not survive," he says. He also predicts that TV will create the real stars.

"Haven't you seen Mandira Bedi? She is everywhere," Krishnan says. Really?