| Home > Media > Bollywood's energy and color in film is exploding onto a mobile phone screen near you, and Mr Neeraj Roy is the man who will put it there |
| Bollywood's energy and color in film is exploding onto a mobile phone screen near you, and Mr Neeraj Roy is the man who will put it there | | Date Created: Jun 24, 2005, 11:34 AM |
 Mr Neeraj Roy is the Managing Director and CEO of Indian company, Hungama, which is taking advantage of convergence on PCs, TVs and mobile phones with some of the world's best loved content. Hungama is creating new mobile brands for more than 300 of its clients - but it is doing a great deal more as well. It started as a company catering to those wanting brand exposure with the 55 million mobile consumers in India, but its most interesting activity today is taking its exclusive rights to 70% of Bollywood content, with 35,000 titles, to more than 30 digital operators worldwide in places such as the UK, Canada, America, Australia, South Africa and South East Asia.
In this interview Neeraj Roy talks about the successor to stagnant or declining voice revenues: content that drives Average Revenue Per User (ARPU). Neeraj says entertainment in the form of video, customised ring tones and wall papers for mobile devices is a huge growth opportunity and describes how he has repurposed the world's No 1 Bollywood portal which reaches 8.5 million consumers (Indiafm.com) for mobiles. He has 60 Bollywood-based games developed for the mobile platform as well.
New media is quickly bridging the gap between people, he says. But consumers are becoming far more discerning, just as their access to worldwide content grows. Roy says mobile entertainment will shortly be a $27b business, twice the size of the video games business and three times that of Hollywood theatrical receipts (weighing in at $9b).
In this interview, Neeraj explains how valuable the X|Media Lab has been for him to make sense of a world in which the traditional media is changing so quickly. He describes his interactions, as a mentor, with young start up companies seeking his advice. He talks about his message to such young companies, which are trying to convert their dreams into concrete and sustainably profitable business models. "If you look at the projected earnings of Google and Yahoo alone this year, they estimate they will make more profit than CBS, ABC and NBC put together. That's a reality...and mobile has created a completely different revenue model," he says.
Quicktime for Mac users here
Flash Video for Windows PC users here
Sony Playstation Portable version can be right-click downloaded here
3GP for video-capable cellphones can be right-click downloaded from here.
Microsoft Windows Media can be right click downloaded from here.
Note for OSX Safari users: Browsers such as Internet Explorer and FireFox work fine for a right click download for the PSP and 3GP files above. But if you are using Safari, do not right click, but instead, press the option key as you click on the filename and, after downloading, change the filename to end in .3gp or .mp4 respectively.
Note for PSP users: after downloading the special .mp4 PSP version above, change the video's file name to the Sony PSP naming convention that is compatible with other file names you may already have on your PSP to avoid conflicts and ensure that the video shows up in the PSP video directory. |
|
|
