Welcome Address by Mr Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP & President, FICCI at FRAMES 2008

Global Convention on the Business of Entertainment
25th – 27th March, 2008
The Renaissance, Powai, Mumbai.

Shri Priyaranjan Dasmunsiji, Hon’ble Minister for Information & Broadcasting
Ms Viviane Reding, European Commissioner, Information Society & Media, European Commission
Mr Stewart Beck, Asst Deputy Minister, Investment, Innovation and Sectors, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada
Ambassador Dominic Dreyer, Ambassador of Switzerland to India,
Smt Asha Swarup, Secretary, Ministry of I & B, Govt of India,

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It gives me immense pleasure to welcome you to FICCI FRAMES 2008, Asia’s largest and premier global convention on the Business of Entertainment.

This is the 9th Year of FRAMES and over these 9 years Frames has grown tremendously becoming a brand in itself, and now encompasses the entire gamut of the Media & Entertainment Industry. This is a gathering of thought leaders and CEO’s from the Entertainment Industry across the world; I welcome you all.

I am delighted to welcome Shri Priyoranjan Das Munshi, our Honble Minister for Information and Broadcasting – someone whom I have known in my previous avatar and I can readily endorse as a person of considerable foresight, values and courage in a political world that sometimes seems bereft of all three of those attributes. Priyoda – Thank you for taking the time to inaugurate Frames 2008 today.

I am also extremely delighted to have with us HE Viviane Reding, European Commissioner, Information Society & Media, European Commission as our Guest of Honour, along with Mr Stewart Beck, Asst Deputy Minister, Investment, Innovation and Sectors, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada, who is our Special Guest. Switzerland is our Partner Country this year and I would like to specially welcome HE Dominic Dreyer, Ambassador of Switzerland to India, to this convention. Switzerland has featured as a glorious and dramatic backdrop to a large number of our films and we look forward to strengthening of the Indo-Swiss partnership in this area and others. I also welcome Smt Asha Swarup, Secretary Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and thank her for her constant support to Industry, FICCI and Frames.

I am also pleased to welcome delegates from 17 countries have already registered for Frames 2008, namely, Australia, Canada, France Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand, UAE, the UK, USA, Korea, Switzerland, and New Zealand. I am confident that you will gain significant value and partnerships from Frames as is usually the case with FICCI hosted events, if I may say so a bit immodestly.

We can all agree that the Entertainment Industry today has a reached a point of critical mass from the early goals of 9 years ago. FICCI is proud to have been a catalyst in the development of this sector and its many successful entrepreneurs I believe that this Industry is poised to achieve the scale and size required to be global in terms of its value and presence.

According to the findings of the FICCI-PriceWaterhouseCoopers Report on the Indian Media & Entertainment Industry, to be formally unveiled today by our Minister, the Industry has recorded a growth of 17% in 2007 over 2006; the Indian E & M industry size is estimated to have been Rs. 513 billion in 2007, up from Rs. 438 billion in 2006. It is projected to grow by 18% cumulatively over the next five years; and reach Rs. 1.157 trillion by 2012.

The transformation of the Indian Entertainment industry over these last 9 years and the development of entrepreneurship in this space has been aided by a reasonably pro-active Government of India policy towards the sector. This is proof that positive actions of the Government can trigger growth. I have seen this in the past in the Information Technology and Telecom and I am confident that Entertainment Industry will be the next big thing out of India.

As most entrepreneurs know the biggest bridge to realizing a vision is capital and the entertainment industry has for many years depended on unstructured and often quite expensive sources of capital and financing. Capital is no longer scarse to ideas and Entertainment entrepreneurs with ideas. Investments from both the domestic capital market and through Foreign investments are funding and creating well capitalized ventures. There have been many significant deals and investments this year with investors ranging from small retail domestic investors to domestic entertainment and media mutual funds to big names like Temasek, Astro, Walt Disney, NBC etc all making moves into this market.

NDTV, TV18, UTV, Fame, Adlabs are all names that weren’t around in this space a decade ago and they are all bringing an energy and transformational presence into the Entertainment space along with many of the older and more traditional names. It is almost sure that over the next decade, the Entertainment space will have stars that we may not have heard of before. That’s the nature of entrepreneurship and that’s the nature of this new India. I am personally very excited to be a part of this even if its sometimes as an observer watching things move at lightning speed.

The challenge for the Entertainment industry over the next few years is to scale up and becoming globally relevant – relevant to the capital markets and investors, relevant to consumers of Entertainment all over the world and to producers of Entertainment all over the world. Scaling up for entrepreneurial companies is not a trivial task – It requires a mind set and approach that’s quite different from the proprietary approach to running companies. I look forward to the day where just like we have names like Infosys and TCS in InfoTech and Software services, Reliance and Airtel in Telecom services, we can also have Entertainment Industry names and brands that are globally relevant. I think the biggest challenge to scaling up Entertainment Industry is the issue of Human assets. The government must look into this issue as a critical focus area and look at rapidly creating capacity in terms of either new institutes in the country or partnerships with neighboring institutions. I would put this a high priority action item.

Coming to the structure of Frames 2008 itself –

Frames 2008 has focused sessions covering the entire gamut of Media & Entertainment like Films, Broadcast (TV & Radio), Digital Entertainment, Animation, Gaming, Visual Effects, and OOH over the next three days. All these sessions would be addressed by International and Indian industry stalwarts and thought leaders.

PwC will present the Ninth Report on the Indian entertainment industry today. This report has become a definitive globally accepted referral document and FICCI is a partner to this report.

Amarchand Mangaldas will present the Law book, partnered with FICCI. This report documents the entire legal structure for the Entertainment Industry and will help investors and the process of corporatization of the industry...

FICCI Frames 2008 will also honor the legendary Rishi Kapoor and Sridevi with the FICCI – FRAMES Living Legend in Entertainment Awards on the evening of 27th March for their extraordinary contribution to Indian Cinema.

Let me end by thanking Mr. Yash Chopra, Chairman, FICCI Entertainment Committee, Mr. Kunal Dasgupta, Co-Chairman, FICCI Entertainment Committee, Mr. Amit Khanna, Chairman, FICCI Convergence Committee and their teams who have steered FRAMES 2008. I would also like to thank Sony Entertainment Television, all the other Sponsors, Partners who have helped in putting together FICCI Frames 2008.

Thank you.