Will We Wither Away Or Thrive?

Convergence of services, functions, business models and technologies will create the media empire of the future

If 2016 was the year of demonetisation, 2017 of big buys (with Walt Disney’s bid for 21st Century Fox at the top), then 2018 was possibly the year of the video – and more specifically, OTT. Which begs the question: what will 2019 be like?  

To me, the seminal moment – the one that was a telling sign of times to come – was the bidding war for the IPL, which played out in all its grandeur earlier this year. And possibly nothing demonstrated just how blurred the lines in the media business are becoming, than this auction. Facebook, despite a monstrosity of a bid amount, lost to Star. Broadcast networks, traditional media businesses, technology networks, telecom giants, OTT players – it was an interesting potpourri of what will inevitably be, the digital fourth estate of the future. Which brings us to 2019: which I believe will be, unarguably, the year of convergence. Today, we’re seeing a world in which so many services are converging at a pace that we hadn’t imagined before. Companies that were in the business of distribution, are now creating content, companies that were focused on social networking, are now looking to expand into digital payments, messaging platforms are morphing into mini-banks, and Indians are consuming more data than ever before. But it doesn’t end there. A recent report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) says India is still the only country in the world where all forms of media – including TV, print, radio, continue to grow. Of course, none have seen the kind of vertical growth that digital has. We have truly become the data guzzler of the world.   

Not surprisingly, there have been many casualties along the way. First and foremost, India’s Internet laws and regulatory system – a system that has historically had too much inertia and too little, well, system. The spread of fake news has put several large technology companies in a precarious position, and for the first time the government, which had till now left the technology sector to its own devices (no pun intended), is now working towards bringing in some form of regulation. The spread of misinformation has had a deleterious effect in India, and it’s now acquired a pace that no judicial corrections can match. With the upcoming General Elections and the looming uncertainty that elections always bring, rumours are rife that the interim Union Budget would be populist, and of that the rupee would spiral at a steady pace. Change is around the corner and it’s making a lot of corporations uncomfortable. 

Another big reason why I believe convergence will be the war song of the next year, is the cacophonous revolution in India’s hinterlands. India has had a 4G revolution in the last 18 months and as many as 200 million people have started using the Internet, mostly on phones. Plummeting data prices, and entrants of players like Reliance Jio, have brought an entirely new demographic on the digital map of India and the world. The BCG believes that by 2023, nearly half (48 per cent) of India’s Internet users will be from the hinterlands. Regional language growth in digital media has been unprecedented and languages are now embedded into phones offering all kinds of services and functionalities. Clearly, there’s a bustling market taking shape right here – with content as its currency of choice.   

For telecom companies, this marketplace and the larger trend of convergence, presents an opportunity to finally differentiate between seemingly identical services with a whole new promise – that of content. To those in the business of content creation – broadcasters, newspapers, radio – technologies like AI and blockchain offer a whole new spin as they match the learnings from user preferences into running a more profitable business. Convergence of services, functions, business models and technologies will create the media empire of the future.

Credits-https://www.businessworld.in/article/Will-We-Wither-Away-Or-Thrive-/28-01-2019-166543/