The Hindu Business Line : Reviving Amar Chitra Katha

For Samir Patil, co-founder, ACK Media, Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha were a world in themselves,of Indian mythology, of brave queens and heroic princes, a world where you met Suppandi the loveable idiot and Shikari Shambu, amongst others. Today, as he repackages the brands for new platforms, he is confident the stories and characters will find place in childhoods cluttered with the saas bahus of television soaps, Power Rangers, weight lifters and super heroes.

Developing world-class Indian products for young audiences worldwide is a dream he’d pursue for free. “There is a huge element of non-business-related satisfaction in pursuing what one really wants to do. To paraphrase Warren Buffet this meets the ultimate test ‘Would I do this job for free?’ “Yes!,” he says. Patil explains why he wouldn’t really, however, have to do it for nothing.

What are ACK Media’s immediate plans?

We are reinventing the brand online. It’s a unique concept. Tinkle Online, as you probably have seen, is essentially an activity and social networking site. We have designed it bottom-up. It’s not a copy of any other site but uniquely designed for what we think is needed for kids, in India or anywhere else. The site is built on the understanding that parents should feel comfortable about their children visiting a site, and maintains the feel of the Tinkle brand.

We are also looking at television programming under the Amar Chitra Katha brand. That’s the trickiest part and I can’t comment on when.

Is it one programme, or a channel?

In the beginning, as a programme; in the long run, we are looking at a channel.

Who’s your target audience?

What we have realised is that the audience is actually everyone. It’s not just for the Tinkle kid, it is also for people who have grown up with Amar Chitra Katha. There is this traditional age-based segmentation of television audiences, but I think a better way to look at it is a need-based segmentation. There are a whole bunch of people who are fascinated by our stories including grown-ups, and children of all ages, therefore, for ACK, the audience is broad. Yes, when it comes to Tinkle Magazine, the audience is primarily a younger age group. Even there, up to tenth graders read it. Our survey also shows that at least 50 per cent of parents read the magazine that they pick up for their kid. And just the readership of 15-plus is actually more than most major magazines, so again it’s very difficult to specify the audience.

So currently are you in talks with any broadcaster, particularly with the return of the epics and mythologies on Indian channels?

We would look at both general entertainment channels (GEC) and kids’ segment. Even for the Tinkle property, we have been in discussion with several people, and found out that there are several slots for GEC too that broadcasters want to fill up with kids’ programming; for example, at a time when parents are home, but dinner needs to be made. In addition to that we will also focus on the direct-to-home and the DVD market that we feel has been under-tapped. Because of VCDs and DVDs, because plasma TV, LCD, flat screen TV sales are also booming, we believe there is a lot of scope and we will be taking DVDs directly to retail.

What about publishing?

We are developing new characters which will feature in the magazine as well as be developed into the kind of Suppandi collection or Shikari Shambu collections we have brought out. For Amar Chitra Katha, we have new magazines every month. We are also developing mobisodes and Webisodes. This acquisition accelerates our strategy of being a multi-brand, multi-platform media company, and extends our catalogue to VCDs, DVDs and audio CDs.

What are the sales figures like?

The total of all our publications is 2.6 million copies a year, of all our publications. Our analysis is that it can double every couple of years because the brand was so under-marketed. It did not have the complementary media required. We are competing for kids’ time here against three main distractions or competitions: homework, TV and the malls. We can’t do anything about the homework, but we will be on TV and we will be in malls through merchandise.

What are the changes you will make to stay connected to the youth of today?

The idea is that the medium changes, the message remains the same. For ACK it is all about our world, our stories, our heroes, expressed in ways that are very different but keeping the family-orientedness, the wholesomeness. We are not going to suddenly introduce language that’s hip and cool just for the sake of being contemporary. With Tinkle it will be all about learning while you have fun. The media will change. We want to make sure Tinkle Online is youthful and entertaining. We have 400-plus titles and some of them took two years to draw. That’s a huge amount of time and luxury that no one has today. You also have a 10-million-plus NRIs population, many of whom have gone there in recent times, particularly those in the US. These are people who grew up with the magazines and continue to be big fans. And the NRI store we’ve opened online is targeted at them.

What’s the amount and source of investment for your expansion plans?

The investment is all personal.But at some point, maybe in a few months, we will look at raising funds. We are most likely to look at private equity for the first round, although we haven’t decided.

What kind of funds would be required?

We would invest about $15-20 million for the next 2-3 years. We have multiple options of raising this amount and will look at them in the next few months.

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