At the TiE-ISB Connect 2006 in Hyderabad, Peter Mukherjea, CEO, The Star Group, said that in the media space, Internet is set to grow the more by 2010. "The Internet is going to occupy more and more of people's time."
In the $1,000 billion media industry, today, print occupies 26%, television 31%, and Internet about 14% which, according to Mukherjea, will grow to $1,450 billion. While the growth of the print medium is expected to go down to 22% from 26%, the television medium is expected to grow by just 1% to 32%. On the other hand, the Internet medium will grow by 4% to 18%.
With India being the world's third-largest television industry after China and the United States with 112 million people owning television at home, it is where all the opportunities are, he added. In India, only 51% of the population owns a television. The untapped market is 49% of India's population which is going to be quite huge.
He said that there are enormous opportunities in the media industry for entrepreneurs to come in. "What we have seen is only the tip of the iceberg," he said.
As a person who questioned in the initial days when Star ventured into the Internet space, where the revenue is going to come from, Peter Mukherjea has changed though he still asks the question himself.
"Time has changed from my time to today. Today convergence has allowed consumers to be everywhere; on mobile, wireless hot spots, wired cars, wired planes, broadband at home and personal video recorders. Now, the mantra is "my time is prime time" so, companies like ours have to enter new territories," he said.
"That is why today, Sky has Sky Broadband, HDTV, and Sky Gnome, and Sky Mobile too is in the offing," he said.
As far as advertising market goes, print is on the top of the charts with 46% of the pie going to it, while TV has 41%, Internet 2%, Radio 3% and outdoor 8%. But Mukherjea is of the opinion that TV advertising is set to grow by 14% by 2010.
If there were 240 TV channels in India in 2004, the number grew to 300-plus in 2005. He expects this to grow to 1,000-plus by 2010.
But Mukherjea sees some regulatory interventions as hurdles in the way he perceives media growth. "Distribution business is getting regulated, price freeze is happening. Mandatory share of sports broadcasts. Also, there are severe restrictions in CAS areas, like mandatory revenue share, fixed pricing, etc."
There is lack of a level playing field in as far as FDI is concerned, he said. "There has to be more of a reality check on this from the government."
Yet, he sees a lot of venture capitalists entering the Indian media industry. "I see more investment coming to cable business because of digitisation. The question is, do we have that many people to work in all these channels when they go up? That is why I say again that there is a huge opportunity for growth in this field in India."