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A drug marketer gets poached, and Ford Credit's JV gets its first Indian MD.
It's a bad nick for gillette, which-according to grapevine-may be losing its star regional business director (Grooming), Rajiv Tandon. The man, who has more than one offer on hand, is likely to join as CEO at HLL and US FMCG major, SC Johnson, JV (Lever-Johnson), which makes household cleaning products. Poached: Cipla's cheap aids drug battle loses a key lieutenant in the form of its 20-year veteran and marketing head, Sunil Khera, who has been roped in by Nicholas Piramal as Director (Sales & Marketing). Ford Credit Kotak Mahindra has, for the first time, elevated an Indian to the post of managing director. With Mike Wagner returning to Ford Credit (US), the mantle has been passed on to Virat Diwanji, who before the promotion was VP field operations. Wartsila India's S.M. Udupa is joining as director HR for Oracle India, and TCS Vice-President Rangesh Nayar moves to head Sanchez Capital Services, a software solutions company. Godrej Pilsbury has quickly found a replacement for its head of HR Vittal Nayak who moved to Lupin. The new lady in is Harsimran Singh, who comes in from Dabhol Power Company, where she was GM HR. MEDICARE Apollo Hospitals and Max Healthcare turn to the Internet to create a seamless patient databank. Coming out of a high-pressure presentation in Chennai, your heart feels a little funny. You think a quick check up is in order, except that all your medical records are stuck at home in Delhi. Problem, right? Not really, if your doctor happens to work at Apollo Hospitals. Using a state-of-the-art hospital information system (HIS), the hospital has created virtual databanks that can be accessed over the Internet. Therefore, an Apollo doctor can look up his patient's records sitting anywhere in the world, and thus be able to deal with an emergency over the phone. Another company that is following suit is Max Healthcare. Using an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Max has created an intranet which stores all hospital information, including patient records. Max's HIS has two functional areas: Medtrack, a fully integrated Hospital Management System, and Labtrack, a pathology laboratory system that automatically barcodes test tube samples, and sends test results automatically to the main computer. ''The system makes past and present information available to our doctors real time,'' says Rajan Chadha, CIO, Max India. At the moment, though, Max only operates three facilities in Delhi. Apollo's web-based system is more versatile. Summarised electronic medical records and test reports from the lab are uploaded to the apollolife.com site, from where they can be accessed using a unique id number. ''It's a truly wherever, whenever system,'' says Dr Vikram Chhatwal, CEO, Apollo Health Street Ltd, Apollo's IT arm. As far as the e-training of doctors is concerned, Apollo does it in house, while Max has an institute in Delhi, where its doctors spend 10 days learning how to use the system. Apollo also has a corporate solution that allows institutional clients to choose and sign up for executive health check up packages, and track and settle their bills online. Apollo and Max have invested about Rs 10 crore and Rs 4 crore, respectively, in their information systems. While Max's has been built in collaboration with an Australian company called Trak, Apollo partnered with GE Medical Systems. Besides, helping patients and doctors, the IT systems allow better resources management. Apollo reckons that its billing and supply order cycle time has come down by 60 days. Now, here is a panacea that the doctors must love. —Vinod Mahanta MEDIA After notching up a profit in its first full year of operations, ETC Networks is now seeking to pull off a similar feat in a new revenue stream-uplinking.
Fact no 1: of the 200-odd satellite television channels available in India, the top three-Zee, Sony and Star-account for almost 90 per cent of the total advertising revenue pie of Rs 2,200 crore. Mystery No 1: What hope in hell do the others left in the fray have of bringing home the bacon? Fact No 2: Of the 200-odd satellite TV channels, the music networks account for just 1.5 per cent of viewership. Mystery No 2: How did ETC Networks-which has a music channel that turns out filmi songs and promos as its flagship-clock a profit in its full year of operations? It's elementary, at least for Jagjit Singh Kohli, Managing Director, ETC Networks. He's being paid for the promotional material that's bunged into his channel. And, as Kohli stresses, ETC is the only channel that enjoys this privilege. So, of ETC Networks' Rs 48 crore revenues for the year ended March 2001-the network also includes a Punjabi regional channel-40 per cent came in by way of film and music promos. The net profit: Rs 2.44 crore. Of course, you have to wonder why it is only ETC that is being rewarded for airing promos? ''It's because of our penetration,'' beams Kohli, who earned his spurs in the bruising distribution business, along with the other two promoters, Yogesh Radhakrishnan and Yogesh Shah, who, a few years ago, split acrimoniously with the Hinduja's Incablenet. ETC claims that it reaches 80 per cent of the Indian population, or 25 million homes, something that no other music channel does, and hence the willingness of producers to pay for getting promo-space on ETC. These days, ETC is preparing to open up another revenue stream--by providing uplinking facilities to other channels. It is the only entity in Mumbai to be granted an uplinking licence (so far, at least). Kohli says that the initial game plan was to ''do it for ourselves, but ever since we bagged the licence, we've been flooded with enquires from virtually every small channel in this region-Sanskaar, Aastha, CMM, Udaya, the four Tara channels-all of which are on the Thaicom satellite.'' For these channels, uplinking via ETC makes ample sense on the costs front: currently they are being beamed via Bangkok, which involves a cost of sending people there and putting them up in hotels. Time is also a factor, as sending the tapes to Bangkok means a lead time of at least three days. That also means advertisements received at the 11th hour (or even the 10th, 9th and 8th) can't be included. (Currently, only news is uplinked from India via VSNL). For ETC, the uplinking venture won't be small change. Channels pay Thaicom between Rs 6 lakh and Rs 10 lakh per month for uplinking from Bangkok. So even if Singh charges each channel Rs 6 lakh per month-and he's initially talking about 10 channels by year-end-that works out to a cool Rs 7.2 crore in the first year of operations. ETC estimates its investment on the project at Rs 5.5 crore in the first phase (which is only for channels on Thaicom). Most of this money will be spent on building an earth station, a high-power amplifier, encoders, et al. What this means is that the uplinking foray will turn profitable in the first year itself. Sounds implausible? Perhaps, but then for the BSE-listed ETC (stock price on July12: Rs 22) going beyond breakeven in year one isn't something it hasn't done before. —Brian Carvalho CEO Survival Kit True to his profession, this network expert carries an array of gizmos to plug and play
Laptop: Toshiba Tecra, with a built-in DVD player. I use the notebook heavily for presentations and accessing emails. Of course, it allows me to play scrabble and chess when I am on a flight. Cellphone: Nokia 8890, which works both in India and the US. I also use it for SMS and select e-mail alerts. Digicam: Here's something I bet you don't do. I carry a small digital camera, Sony Mavicam, which I use to take shots of the hotel room I stay in. The pictures are promptly sent over the email to my wife, just to let her know I am being taken care of properly! Handheld: Palm III for managing my contacts and scheduling my appointments. Miscellaneous: I also tend to carry a universal power converter and different plugs, so that I don't lose a battle (more often a business contract) for want of a plug. ALLIANCE Star's Net plans are reborn in the Microland Group company. Had this been any other time, Sunil Lulla would probably be stretched out on a couch at home, surfing the Net on his laptop. For, the CEO of Indya.com is just recovering from multiple fractures to his left hand-the result of a recent fall in his bath. But these are hard times. Ask Lulla and he will tell you that there's worse pain than the one in his arm to deal with. For instance, the affable CEO had to recently fire 50 of his staffers in a bid to keep his dotcom afloat. Lulla won't reveal any figures, but admits that Indya is at least another three years away from profitability.
Ergo, Lulla-plaster and all-is logging 12 to 14 hours a day at work, and spewing words such as ''monetisation'' and ''every day usefulness''. A senior executive explains what the new mantra means. ''Before launching any new channel or service, the first question that we ask ourselves now is 'Will it be useful to the users and can we make money from it?','' says he. Adds Lulla: ''We will use every opportunity to become the mass gate keepers of interest and usage relevant to every Indian through our interactive range of product and services.'' Unlike some other dotcoms, however, Indya has some big backers to rely on. A little over a year after picking up a reported 33 per cent stake in Indya, Rupert Murdoch's Star TV returned last June to pick up another 9 per cent. Another 7 per cent is with some other foreign investors. In the bargain, Indya has netted some Rs 210 crore, enough to keep it chugging along for a long while, given its monthly cash burn (BT estimates) of Rs 1.5 crore. But that's not how Lulla-or his investors-want to play the game. Now that Star has dropped its plan to launch its own portal, Indya has become the official host of all Star channels like Star Plus, Star Movies, Star Sports, besides its popular programmes like Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) and Junior KBC. This arrangement helps Indya in three different ways. First, the portal gets promoted on various Star channels at no or very little cost; two, it gets plenty of visitors looking for information on TV programmes on various channels and, three, it earns advertising revenue through joint promotions.
For example, a few months ago, Hyundai Motors India ran an advertising campaign on Star's blockbuster show, Kaun Banega Crorepati, where viewers were invited to estimate the number of months it took Hyundai to reach the 2-lakh car sales mark. The viewers had the option of sending in their entries online at the indya.com site. Star now plans to run more such cross promotions. That apart, there is Star's cable TV and radio for Indya to leverage. Hathaway Cable Internet-a subsidiary of Hathaway Cable and Datacom, which is part-owned by Star-has 30,000 subscribers to its internet service. Then, there are 2.5 million cable homes that Hathaway reaches in major metros. Now, Star has just launched RadioCity, an fm channel, in Bangalore, widening the scope for Indya. Says Peter Mukerjea, CEO, Star India: ''Indya.com will be an integral part of our forays into interactive TV programmes, cross-promotions and cross-selling of advertising solutions.'' Apart from Star, Indya has 30 of its own channels and services. While the channels range from art and astrology to law and cricket, services range from personal finance to shopping to travel. There are 24 channel partners like apnaloan.com (for personal finance) and indiaproperties.com (for buying and selling real estate) who could at a future date open a new stream of revenue for Indya. But right now, Lulla's left holding (a) plaster and a hope. —Dilip Maitra
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