Ekta Kapoor, Joint Managing Director and Creative Director, Balaji Telefilms, has often been called Queen of Indian Television and ‘Soap Queen’ - titles that she is perhaps not overtly fond of. But what is undisputed is the tremendous influence she wields over the television and movie-going audience, and if things go as per plan, audiences on the digital platform as well. Over the years, she has evolved from a purely creative person to a creative leader with business acumen to boot.
THE HARVARD EXPERIENCE
What set off the transformation was an 18-day owner/president management programme that Kapoor attended at Harvard University in 2013. Having started the company at the young age of 19, and with no formal business education, she says the course made her realize that a business is much more than the way you look at it. With experienced businessmen as mentors and case studies to dwell upon, this experience gave her time to reflect on the road ahead for the approximately Rs 350-crore Balaji Telefilms. One problem at Balaji related to economies of scale and Kapoor found a solution in one of the presented case studies. Elaborates Kapoor, “A big learning was on economies of scale that you are never going to be able to reduce your fixed cost more than a particular amount. There was one case study that suddenly made me understand what our problem was.” She adds, “We have a fixed cost. The moment you do five shows, you are equal. You do three shows, you are losing money. You do eight shows, you make money. At 10 shows, your profitability is at its premium, so you have to always have 10 shows on air. I realized that we are now in a volume game because we don’t have our own IPR (Intellectual Property Rights). The understanding of the business for Balaji Television came from there and in the last two years, we have started showing profits on television again.” The proof is to be found in the numbers: segment-wise revenue from commissioned programmes for the half-year ended September 2015 (HYFY16), stood at Rs 12,475 lakh as compared to Rs 9,532 lakh for the corresponding period the year before.
This change is something that her mother and business partner Shobha Kapoor, Managing Director, Balaji Telefilms Ltd acknowledges too: “Ekta is creatively gifted but having a business touch is very important, which she has picked up in the last three to four years. She has understood the business side.” She proudly continues, “Ekta has matured and mellowed and understood that she can’t lose her temper or get angry at small things. She has realized that it’s a people’s business and you can’t run it alone and that you need people and can’t move ahead without them.” For somebody who describes her over twodecade long career in media in two words – “not planned” and started working to supplement her pocket money, Ekta Kapoor is now looking at the business with a perspective for the next 20 years.
INSTITUTIONALIZING BALAJI
Another change post Harvard was setting up an advisory board, in addition to bringing in Sameer Nair, former CEO of Star Plus and Imagine TV, as Group CEO in mid 2014. The focus area is institutionalizing Balaji and developing a new language around the Balaji brand and an effort is being made to create content with a clear target audience, wherein television is focused on the mass audience, films on urban India and the international audience and digital targeting urban youth and grown-ups. Kapoor is also looking at having different brands for different audiences, and says that while Balaji is a family brand, you could see a family youth brand and a kids’ brand, basically addressing the needs of all kinds of viewers - kids, teenagers, urban or the mass audience. She says, “The perception that Balaji is related to just television and one type of content, because that content is done very well, is going to gradually change. A company should be known for quality, never a type and I am trying to shift from that type to the quality. If it is mass, it will stand for quality but mass entertainment. If it’s class then it will be tanding for aesthetics but entertainment for the classes.”
ALT– THE BIG GAME-CHANGER
It is the digital space that Balaji is betting on now to be a gamechanger for the company. It has launched a subsidiary ALT Digital Media Entertainment, for its foray into the Over the Top (OTT) Subscription based Video-On-Demand (SVOD) space to showcase exclusive original premium content in Hindi, English and regional languages. The company raised Rs 150 crore in February this year to fund and grow the venture. Branded ALT Balaji, the service is likely to be launched in June or July this year and will be priced at Rs 60 per month for subscribers in India and Rs 120 per month for subscribers abroad. (With increased penetration of smartphones and better bandwidth, it is estimated that the number of Indians accessing VOD on digital platforms will grow to 200-300 million by 2020, up from 100 million today.) Balaji is targeting to break-even by the end of the decade and have four million subscribers on board by then. While some OTT players, like Netflix, also work on the subscription model, most operate on the advertiser-driven model. However, Kapoor justifies the subscription driven business model, saying if you want to do grand shows, you can’t do them without having a certain amount of cost.
This move also ensures that the IPR for the content will be owned by Balaji, unlike TV programmes where the IPR rests with the broadcaster who gets a commission on the programme. So, while the broadcaster is able to monetize the content across television, digital and even in the international markets, the production house gets nothing. By contrast in the UK, the IPR rests with the production house and this helped production companies such as Fremantle and Endemol scale up, monetize their content and increase revenue by exporting formats across scripted and non-scripted genres. With Balaji looking to produce 300 hours of original content, this could help them to substantially rev up revenues. In fact, Balaji believes that once ALT achieves scale, it could contribute a third of the group’s revenues and eventually even overtake films and TV.
‘The Ekta of today is a lot more accepting of failures’
Ekta Kapoor, Joint Managing Director, Balaji Telefilms, could have had an easy life, being the daughter of successful Bollywood actor Jeetendra. But at age 19, she chose to take the path less travelled and entered the world of television around the time satellite television was taking off in India. Since then, Brand Ekta has become the mainstay of TV soaps with clutter-breaking content. Over the years, she has successfully led Balaji Telefilms across television and motion pictures, thereby transforming it into a fully integrated production house catering to both the small and big screen. She has brought in creativity and key differentiation at Balaji vis-à-vis its peers, thanks to her in-depth understanding of the audience’s preferences. In a free-wheeling conversation with Srabana Lahiri and Simran Sabherwal, Ekta Kapoor talks of her own evolution over the years, her work mantra and strategy for the future.
Q] You have topped IMPACT’s list of 50 Most Influential Women in Media, Marketing and Advertising 2016. What does it mean to be a woman on top and what do you think about the role of women in contemporary India today?
Women are breaking the glass ceiling so fast that many have not been able to grapple with the growth. It was supposed to be a structured changeover where women get their due and then the second strata of society will catch up, but women have grown in every sphere in the last 10 years into what was earlier called a man’s world. Yes, there is still a lot of misinformation in villages, but I believe in the champagne glass route… it’s a trickledown effect and it is going to take some time. When we got into Television, my mom and I, there were very few women working in TV. Today, women are running production houses, writing shows, the producers and content heads are also women. Even if you look at other fields, women are breaking myths.
Q] So you don’t believe that there are glass ceilings to be broken anymore?
No, I believe that there are pockets even now where it hasn’t yet trickled down, but it’s a matter of time.
Q] Have you ever felt at a disadvantage in the business sphere on account of being a woman?
No, I have a clear understanding of myself, maybe it’s my own DNA that I don’t look at disadvantages. It’s mentally fracturing if you see the glass half full. The way I look at it is that I can multi-task because I am a woman, I can write for the woman because I am a woman. I can’t get into the big boys club because I am a woman. I can’t be invited to parties where I can backslap all the big boys of TV or films because I am a woman. However, these disadvantages don’t match up to the advantages. I’d rather stick with the advantages and not concentrate on the disadvantages.
Q] Tell us about the initial days of your career… Did you have to struggle a lot? Does any anecdote come to mind?
At the beginning of my career, I went to Delhi for a meeting with a Doordarshan head. Despite having an appointment, I waited for four hours, only to be told that the meeting was not happening. I asked if I should come back the next day. They said no, but I could try and meet him when he walks from his cabin to his car. There were four others running to meet him at the same time, and I ran the fastest to catch up with him so that I could give him my concept. I remember that he didn’t even take it and told me to give it to his subordinate. Five years later, the very same man came to us for a job. I just looked up to God… Maybe he had seen my struggle and hence the karmic gesture.
Q] What are the three key learnings that you have picked up in your journey so far?
Life and your job teach you hard lessons. One is, let your work speak for you. No amount of jargon or research can ever speak or display a point better than the content you create. The second is that the outcome is not in your hands, but the journey is – so be satisfied with your journey and what you are creating. When I make a show, I make it with full dedication because at the end you don’t know if it’s going to work or not. You cannot be suffering that guilt that you didn’t put in your best. The third learning is, for any company to run, there is one ‘I’ that can ruin it, and the ruining ‘I’ is me.
It has to be ‘Us’, ‘We’, team work that makes anything run. You have to be a leader wherein the faults should be yours and the gains should be your team’s.
Q] What’s the difference between the Ekta of today and Ekta of 10 years ago?
The Ekta of today is a lot more accepting of failures. The Ekta of the past would be very hard on herself if she failed. The Ekta of today takes more risk because she is not so hard on herself, and is willing to accept an outcome. The Ekta of today is as temperamental as she was earlier but knows how to control it and the Ekta of today delegates better.
Q] How has your professional and personal relationship with your parents been, particularly as you work with your mother in the company?
Luckily for me and my mum, we rarely cross paths because we are doing totally different jobs. When we meet each other, more than work catch-up, we have lot of personal catch-up to do. The big events in our lives professionally link us way more. So there is an advantage. You constantly interact because you are working together and the disadvantage is that somehow in personal conversation, work creeps in.
Q] How do you describe yourself?
I am a Gemini and am many women in one woman. I will describe myself the way Linda Goodman describes a Gemini woman - that is, if you marry a Gemini woman, it’s like marrying a harem… you don’t know which woman you will wake up with! I wake up one day and want to be Boho and make a cool young show, another day I wake up wanting to do mass television, I can make a ‘Dirty Picture’ and a ‘Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’ also. This gives my various creativities a lot of scope. I can’t be categorized. There is no word for me because I can’t be put in a box.
Q] What kind of a boss are you?
I am the kind of boss they have to handle. I am not the best boss but I am quite a loveable boss… From being somebody who in a bad mood would require you to walk on eggshells to being somebody who is always there for you.
Q] What’s your work mantra?
Never teach by jargon, teach by example. If you want your team to work long hours a day, don’t just say go home when your work is over. Sit there, and finish your work and when you do it, they will too.
Q] What work are you most proud of?
There are many shows which have not done well, but I am really proud of them. I am very proud of ‘Kahaani Hamaaray Mahaabhaarat Ki’ and did a lot of research for it. People found the dressing to be Roman, which was how it was then. I didn’t use many colours as colours were still to be invented. I tried to catch the era and it was one of my best shows, but it didn’t work. I recently made ‘Pyaar Ko Ho Jaane Do’, a love story between a Pakistani spy and an Indian woman, an unbelievably spectacular show which didn’t work. ‘Ajeeb Daastaan Hai Ye’, a nice show about a woman who moves on with a man with whom she shares a platonic friendship after the breakdown of her marriage, wasn’t watched. The show would have probably worked better if it was on the digital app.
Q] You were at Harvard some time ago… What was your experience there?
In a class of 110, there were only 15 girls and it was a blast. Most of the boys were millionaires and billionaires and as they couldn’t enter clubs without a girl, it was fun having them wait for you as you got ready. However, with so many boys, no one took the morning off to do their hair. So my friend Winnie Chiu and I had a back-up plan where one of us would put down the name board, which had our name on it, when the other was not in class. We managed to take four classes off to do our hair.
Q] Personally, what are you looking forward to at this point?
Where my life is intertwined between personal and professional, I don’t know…. but I am a seeker of happiness. If professionally my app gets launched and does well, it will give me inner peace, just like knowing that a certain audience is accepting my work more than the money it will make.
On a personal level, I am hoping one day - I am not going to use the word ‘settle down’, it’s too mundane… I look at kids and marriage as an important aspect of my life and I am hoping to achieve that one day. I want to be somebody who works till the last day of her life and not be the one who gives up their career for marriage. But, on the other hand, emotionally I want to be that gratified in the personal life that the work life should take time to match up.
Q] What are the final thoughts you want to leave us with...
I just want to tell stories, create the content I want to create and be happy with what I get and just be. That’s true success. Perfection is not going to be chased by me anymore.
The TRP Queen
While digital is the way ahead, Balaji continues to rule the TRP charts with three of its productions Naagin on Colors, Kumkum Bhagya on Zee TV and Ye Hai Mohabbatein on Star Plus which were among the top five programmes – Hindi GEC for Week 11: Saturday, March 12, 2016 to Friday, March 18, 2016. So what is the secret behind this and how does Kapoor manage to assess the pulse of the audience? Surprisingly, while channels talk about consumer insights, Kapoor doesn’t believe in the concept at all. She says, “I personally think that research is a mechanism to do a post mortem. It’s never a mechanism to pre-empt. That risk-taking cannot come from research. It’s about intuition, great story-telling, experience and new talent to bring in the freshness. I am not one for research or consumer insights.” She says that every show is different and the basic understanding is that each show hits at a different audience. So while a Bade Achhe Lagte Hain targeted urban India having loneliness issues, the current No. 1 show across Hindi GECs, Naagin, targets mass India with folklore knowledge and a legacy of mythology. She says, “You constantly update the understanding because television caters to mass India.
City audiences are on VOD and do not tune in for appointment viewing. It’s basically the new India that enjoys coming home for appointment viewing. That audience wants to see hardcore drama and ‘Naagin’ provides that.” A conscious effort has also been made to address social issues in the garb of entertainment and thus her shows have female protagonists as working professionals, associated with some charitable cause. Trying to address different themes has more often than not got the desired results as far as ratings are concerned. While the show ‘Ye Hai Mohabbatein’, which showcased the travails of a woman who couldn’t conceive was “a breakout success”, the audience did not take well to ‘Ajeeb Daastaan Hai Yeh’ where a woman moves on in life post the breakdown of her marriage. Issues such as domestic violence and marital rape have also been addressed in her shows and Kapoor says that the marital rape track got panned and questions raised that this shouldn’t be shown on television. The same philosophy will also stretch to the digital platform, where social causes and issues such as LGBT rights are addressed. She says, “It’s important that anything to do with today’s stigmas should be dealt with. However, it shouldn’t be done in a flippant manner.”
OF MOVIES & MORE
On the movies front, 2016 started off on a disappointing note as ‘Kya Kool Hain Hum 3’ did not set the box-office on fire. The company aims to do about six-eight movies in a year and has an interesting slate of films lined up for the year ahead that includes Azhar – a biographical sports film based on former Indian cricket captain Mohammad Azharuddin, Udta Punjab – which looks at the drug menace in Punjab, Half Girlfriend - a film adaptation of Chetan Bhagat’s book, and Flying Jatt – a superhero franchise.
And it’s not just media that has Kapoor interested when it comes to tapping creativity. She recently launched her own collection of Indian ethnc wear and jewellery, ‘EK’ – her signature label that retails on the online marketplace, Snapdeal.
TELLING HER OWN STORY
Looking back at the initial days of struggle, Kapoor recollects the time when her new company had invested money in production for a particular channel, the software was ready and suddenly the channel was acquired and they didn’t have any takers for the pilot episodes. Today, as Balaji attempts to provide content directly to its consumers, Kapoor reiterates the importance the company places on the digital app: “Five years from now, I see Balaji on the smallest screen – the mobile. I see Balaji finding new identities, being more malleable, more clutter-breaking, more alive.” She continues, “I want to tell different stories. I am not being able to do that too much on TV.
TV has seen the dramatic side of me. Films have seen the aspirational side of me. There is a certain kind of writing that I don’t think I have even displayed yet which I will get a chance to do on digital.” In spite of all that she is working on, Kapoor is determined to head back to her Ivy League University in Massachusetts to complete the next two modules of her management programme. Says she, “I have six releases this year. But by March next, I should be back at Harvard…”
Feedback: simran.sabherwal@exchange4media.com
