New Delhi: Billionaire Bhupendra Kumar Modi, who recently exited Spice Telecom, is planning big-ticket investments in the media and entertainment, or M&E, sector. With a business strategy weaving in race, geography and technology, Modi plans to invest $1 billion in M&E over the next five years through a newly formed company, Spice Enfotainment.
He is shifting base from California to Singapore in a move symbolic of his focus on what he describes as the I-to-I market—Israel to Indonesia. He is venturing into film production, television production and broadcasting, music, gaming and Internet. Modi wants to own content and distribute it over multiple platforms. “Digital and wireless is the mantra,” he says. Modi outlined his M&E business plans in an interview with Mint. Edited excerpts:
Can you run us through your broad plans for the media and entertainment sector?
We are looking at various areas where we will ourselves be developing content. One way is to buy content from outside and integrate it and the other way is to create your own. We are now starting to create our own content. We are now starting a film production company, we will enter television production and broadcasting—we will buy channels. There are three-four proposals we are looking at. We are looking at music companies and we are looking at gaming companies. In all these areas, first we are looking at existing companies. We find that companies are talking to us either for a strategic investment or for a complete buyout.
A new beginning: B.K. Modi’s new venture targets youth. He said the company is looking at the age group of 13-25 as they are the ones using these new tools of mobile and the Internet. Harikrishna Katragadda / Mint
The share prices of most of these companies have come down substantially and they have a financial crunch. The reason they have a financial crunch is that they have a single model. Our model is a technology model. If you make content, first it should be digital. Once it is digital, it can the be converted for various platforms like mobile, Internet, etc. The two new concepts that are changing the game is mobile and Internet. This is why a lot of these companies are failing. They are unable to adapt.
Spice’s overall strategy is a youth strategy. We are looking at the age group of 13 to 25. They are the guys using these new tools. The two big tools are mobile and Internet, but they are also undergoing change. Internet is virtually free and mobile is also going that way. The cost of hardware as well as connectivity is coming down. So how people consume entertainment is going through a change.
So what we are looking at is not just content, but also the technology to deliver it on all these emerging platforms.
The other interesting change is the language. If you produce content in English, you can deliver it to a global audience. For data, English is already the accepted language. For music, the language doesn’t matter. Music is global.