'The Most Valuable Show For Us Is KBC'

'We want Sony to be meaningful to all of India.'

Gaurav Banerjee (49) took over as head of Sony Pictures Networks India or SPNI in August 2024, six months after its merger with Zee was called off.

SPNI, the Indian arm of Los Angeles-based Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), is part of Japan's $83 billion Sony Corporation Group.

SPNI's revenue was stagnant and its 29-channel (SAB, MAX, YAY etc) broadcasting business looked challenged.

Two years on revenue is at ₹7,064 crore, up over 9 per cent from FY25.

Vanita Kohli-Khandekar/Business Standard met Banerjee at his Mumbai office for a conversation.

What has driven the rise in revenue?

It is a result of three things.

First, SonyLIV (its OTT platform) has grown and content like the Asia Cup, Indian Idol and MasterChef have led that growth.

Second, Sony SAB has grown to become number one (on viewership) for the first time.

Third, SET (Sony Entertainment Television, its flagship channel) has grown nearly 30 per cent from where it was two years ago.

With the launch of our regionals less than 100 days away, we are hopeful of further growth.

'The new KBC encourages you to think and figure out an answer'

How is that journey going?

The first step is, can we get better at our core market, Hindi? This network has had pioneering shows like CID in the 1990s and Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin in the early 2000s.

We have managed to bring some of that innovation back. For example, to connect to young fans on Indian Idol there has to be a different interpretation of who's an idol -- it is not just a playback singer in a Bollywood movie, it is a pop icon with a different singing signature.

We did that two years ago and viewership jumped by over 30 per cent.

In the new season of Kaun Banega Crorepati, we have tried to move away from the old world of a question-and-answer show.

The answers to most general knowledge questions are in your pocket. Why do you need to watch a show for that? The new KBC encourages you to think and figure out an answer.

The next step -- we want Sony to be meaningful to all of India.

Therefore, we are launching a big foray into Marathi, Bangla, Tamil and Telugu.

Madhuri Dixit will be hosting KBC on Sony Marathi and SonyLIV.

In Tamil, we will start with Celebrity Masterchef with Samantha Ruth Prabhu and a Tamil version of Indian Idol with A R Rahman. Plus, big original shows in Bangla.

All of this is within this calendar year. And in future years, we will do more content in Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

The third thing is sports. One of our first acquisitions, the Asia Cup has done very well.

The Asian Games are in September. We have cricket rights in England, New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

The effort is to build a large live sports portfolio and use it to build reach on streaming and TV.

'We continue to see value and growth in television and are putting our money behind it'

Both your key businesses -- linear and digital -- are profitable. Which of them is the growth driver?

Sony is certainly a growth driver.

We continue to see value and growth in television and are putting our money behind it.

A week after KBC, we are launching a show called India Game Show on SET and SonyLIV.

It began on YouTube with two comedians, Bharti (Singh) and Haarsh (Limbachiya).

We are launching Crime Patrol, with Ajay Devgn as a presenter and bringing a new show with Rohit Sharma.

'We see India becoming a $10 trillion economy in the next decade.'

What was the brief from Los Angeles when you took over?

It was simple: Grow the brand of Sony and its entertainment footprint in India.

Sony had been in India for nearly three decades. Its primary identity had been that of a television network.

My job was to help transform it from being a television network to an entertainment company, which is agnostic of screens and known for high-quality content.

We see India becoming a $10 trillion economy in the next decade.

This will be lit up by a billion screens of entertainment. We want a good share of that. Our playbook here is stellar IP (intellectual property) creation.

What are the challenges in that?

The company that I stepped into had been planning on a merger for over three years. And then, for a variety of reasons, it did not happen.

For three years, we were trying to not think about the long term and getting to what needs to get done.

Now, we believe the best thing for Sony is to build great shows and be agnostic about where viewers see them.

This means more investments in building the creative muscle of the company. This has to be a creative company -- that is our core product.

Sony is a standalone media firm in a market dominated by Google, Meta and others for whom media is part of a larger business. Does that make you feel vulnerable?

Not at all. We have never felt and I don't believe anybody in Sony feels that we are a small company. We are not.

We are exceptionally large and meaningfully so. Everyone who works at SPNI knows that all that is needed of us is that we make terrific shows and monetise them well.

The simplicity of that aim is a strength -- there are no distractions.

Over the last five years, linear television's reach has gone from 900 million people to just over 600 million. Is it in decline?

We need to update our definition of television.

If we just limit TV to pay television there are challenges but there are also ways out.

We have seen growth on pay television on both our lead channels.

The larger way to think about TV is connected television, where we are seeing phenomenal growth in this country.

How critical is streaming/digital as a growth driver?

It is a large part of our overall business and has grown enormously in the last two years.

A lot of the best content lights up both digital and traditional pay TV screens.

The most valuable show for us across this divide for several years has been KBC. The Asia Cup took SonyLIV to new heights.

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff