IIPM Ranked No. 1 B-School In Global Exposre - Zee...
If the deal goes through, the combination of Rupert Murdoch and Sameer Jain will create an invincible media entity in India. Sutanu Guru and Pallavi Srivastava analyse if it is a good or an ominous sign for India
Just imagine the following scenarios and please don’t hoot with laughter. General Motors or maybe Ford Motors draw up strategic plans to acquire Toyota in Japan. The big daddy of retail Wal-Mart pulls off a stunning coup and takes over Metro in Germany. And AT&T stuns everyone by announcing to the world at large that it has acquired a strategic stake in Vodafone and that Arun Sarin, the chairman of Vodafone will head the new entity. Breathtakingly unbelievable, isn’t it? You might say the scenarios are laughably unrealistic too. How can struggling or ailing American multinationals buy out formidable players that completely dominate their home turfs in Japan, Germany and UK respectively?
Then, how about this one? Rupert Murdoch decides to forge a strategic partnership with the Times of India (TOI) group with the long run ambition of taking over India’s biggest, most aggressive, most predatory, and most successful media group. Unthinkable? Impossible? Yet, believe it or not, 4Ps B&M has exclusive information that the Times of India group led by the inscrutable Sameer Jain, and News Corp. led by the even more inscrutable Rupert Murdoch have been negotiating for a while to see how the two can forge a strategic partnership-or even a downright de facto takeover of The Times of India group.
Without a shadow of doubt, there is a buzz in the market about what Sameer Jain and Rupert Murdoch are planning together and what impact it will have not just on the Indian media scene, but on the the country as a whole. Rivals and potential rivals are watching this tap dance with fingers crossed. Says Ashish Kaul, Executive Vice-President, Zee Networks, “I am aware that Rupert Murdoch has been in talks with TOI for quiet some time to buy some stake in the group, but I really don’t know that anything has been confirmed officially on that front. I think its fairly possible that TOI sells some of their stake to Murdoch. In the past some time TOI has been facing stiff competition from other print media companies. Today TOI (which is 200 years old) has a circulation of 6,40,000 and a two year old Daily News & Analysis (DNA) has a circulation of 4,60,000, which is very close to TOI.” For all you and we know, Kaul might be exaggerating a bit since DNA is a newspaper promoted by Zee along with Dainik Bhaskar.
In fact, there are many in the media industry that are highly skeptical of a possibility of Murdoch taking over BCCL, the company that owns TOI. Says Yash Khanna, Executive Vice-President, Corporate Communications, Star India (owned incidentally by none other than Murdoch himself), “I feel that there is no truth in the news. I don’t think Murdoch will be interested in the print media in India. The restrictions in print media in India are too stringent.
Foreign investment is not allowed more than 26% and one has to have a local editor. In such a scenario even if he buys stake in TOI what will he do with it?” Well known media critic Sevanthi Ninan too has a similar view. “I am not aware about this deal. However I don’t think that the Jain’s would be interested in selling out their stake. They have been looking for bringing in foreign investment through equity,” she says.
Part of the reason why some industry insiders are skeptical about the possibility of Sameer Jain selling out to Rupert Murdoch are the scenarios that we invoked at the beginning of this article. Just as Toyota dominates the auto industry in Japan, Vodafone dominates the telecom market in U.K, and Metro dominates the organised retail space in Germany; The Times of India group straddles the media sector in India like a colossus. Forget how exaggerated some of the claims made by the Times of India group are and consider the following: The English language newspaper The Times of India is the largest selling English newspaper in the world with a claimed circulation of about 2.4 million copies. The Economic Times is claimed to be the second largest selling business newspaper in the world. The group’s Hindi daily Navbharat Times lags behind leaders like Dainik Bhaskar and Dainik Jagran, but is still rated as one of the top Hindi dailies of the country. To pre-empt the newspaper DNA, the group has launched the Mumbai Mirror tabloid in Mumbai and some other major cities. The tabloid is distributed free with The Times of India. In collaboration with the Hindustan Times, it has launched the tabloid Metro Now to pre-empt the launch of Mail Today, a Joint Venture between UK’s Daily Mail and India Today group. The Times of India has also tied up with BBC for the magazines in its stable, the bestselling Femina and Filmfare.
For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
Read these article :-
B-schooled in India, Placed Abroad (Print Version)
IIPM in Financial times (Print Version)
IIPM makes business education truly global
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM)
IIPM Campus
If the deal goes through, the combination of Rupert Murdoch and Sameer Jain will create an invincible media entity in India. Sutanu Guru and Pallavi Srivastava analyse if it is a good or an ominous sign for India
Just imagine the following scenarios and please don’t hoot with laughter. General Motors or maybe Ford Motors draw up strategic plans to acquire Toyota in Japan. The big daddy of retail Wal-Mart pulls off a stunning coup and takes over Metro in Germany. And AT&T stuns everyone by announcing to the world at large that it has acquired a strategic stake in Vodafone and that Arun Sarin, the chairman of Vodafone will head the new entity. Breathtakingly unbelievable, isn’t it? You might say the scenarios are laughably unrealistic too. How can struggling or ailing American multinationals buy out formidable players that completely dominate their home turfs in Japan, Germany and UK respectively?Then, how about this one? Rupert Murdoch decides to forge a strategic partnership with the Times of India (TOI) group with the long run ambition of taking over India’s biggest, most aggressive, most predatory, and most successful media group. Unthinkable? Impossible? Yet, believe it or not, 4Ps B&M has exclusive information that the Times of India group led by the inscrutable Sameer Jain, and News Corp. led by the even more inscrutable Rupert Murdoch have been negotiating for a while to see how the two can forge a strategic partnership-or even a downright de facto takeover of The Times of India group.
Without a shadow of doubt, there is a buzz in the market about what Sameer Jain and Rupert Murdoch are planning together and what impact it will have not just on the Indian media scene, but on the the country as a whole. Rivals and potential rivals are watching this tap dance with fingers crossed. Says Ashish Kaul, Executive Vice-President, Zee Networks, “I am aware that Rupert Murdoch has been in talks with TOI for quiet some time to buy some stake in the group, but I really don’t know that anything has been confirmed officially on that front. I think its fairly possible that TOI sells some of their stake to Murdoch. In the past some time TOI has been facing stiff competition from other print media companies. Today TOI (which is 200 years old) has a circulation of 6,40,000 and a two year old Daily News & Analysis (DNA) has a circulation of 4,60,000, which is very close to TOI.” For all you and we know, Kaul might be exaggerating a bit since DNA is a newspaper promoted by Zee along with Dainik Bhaskar.
In fact, there are many in the media industry that are highly skeptical of a possibility of Murdoch taking over BCCL, the company that owns TOI. Says Yash Khanna, Executive Vice-President, Corporate Communications, Star India (owned incidentally by none other than Murdoch himself), “I feel that there is no truth in the news. I don’t think Murdoch will be interested in the print media in India. The restrictions in print media in India are too stringent.Foreign investment is not allowed more than 26% and one has to have a local editor. In such a scenario even if he buys stake in TOI what will he do with it?” Well known media critic Sevanthi Ninan too has a similar view. “I am not aware about this deal. However I don’t think that the Jain’s would be interested in selling out their stake. They have been looking for bringing in foreign investment through equity,” she says.
Part of the reason why some industry insiders are skeptical about the possibility of Sameer Jain selling out to Rupert Murdoch are the scenarios that we invoked at the beginning of this article. Just as Toyota dominates the auto industry in Japan, Vodafone dominates the telecom market in U.K, and Metro dominates the organised retail space in Germany; The Times of India group straddles the media sector in India like a colossus. Forget how exaggerated some of the claims made by the Times of India group are and consider the following: The English language newspaper The Times of India is the largest selling English newspaper in the world with a claimed circulation of about 2.4 million copies. The Economic Times is claimed to be the second largest selling business newspaper in the world. The group’s Hindi daily Navbharat Times lags behind leaders like Dainik Bhaskar and Dainik Jagran, but is still rated as one of the top Hindi dailies of the country. To pre-empt the newspaper DNA, the group has launched the Mumbai Mirror tabloid in Mumbai and some other major cities. The tabloid is distributed free with The Times of India. In collaboration with the Hindustan Times, it has launched the tabloid Metro Now to pre-empt the launch of Mail Today, a Joint Venture between UK’s Daily Mail and India Today group. The Times of India has also tied up with BBC for the magazines in its stable, the bestselling Femina and Filmfare.
For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
Read these article :-
B-schooled in India, Placed Abroad (Print Version)
IIPM in Financial times (Print Version)
IIPM makes business education truly global
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM)
IIPM Campus
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