Join us TONIGHT on the radio with Raghav Bahl

4PM all cities only on HumDesi Radio, tonight we speak to India’s Ted Turner, Raghav Bahl. Majority shareholder in no less than 28 television station in India, Raghav Bahl is the Founder, Controlling Shareholder and Managing Director of Network 18.

Our conversation with Raghav shows a man keenly aware of the world, on point with his information and with an amazing attitude. Raghav began his career as a management consultant with A.F. Ferguson & Co. followed by a stint with American Express Bank before he turned to his first love, media. Winner of the Sanskriti Award for Journalism in 1994, Raghav has over 22 years’ experience in television and journalism. He founded TV18 (now Network18 Group) in 1993.

He has been instrumental in crafting successful Joint Ventures with such media giants as NBC Universal, Viacom, Time Warner and Forbes. In a short span of 15 years, Network18 has achieved a market capitalization in excess of USD 0.75 bn.

Raghav is a widely admired entrepreneur and was hailed as a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He was also selected by Ernst & Young as ‘Entrepreneur of The Year (2007) for Business Transformation’

An Economics graduate from St. Stephens College, Raghav has done MBA from the University of Delhi.

Raghav has also authored the book ‘Superpower?: The Amazing Race Between China’s Hare And India’s Tortoise’.

An Excerpt from Raghav Bahl’s book “Super Power?”
WHY DON’T THEY GET INDIA?
A lot of Indians believe in rebirth and transmigration of the soul.While it is an intellectually rich philosophy, its quick and everyday version simply means that a person’s second, third, fourth or nth life is influenced by his actions, or karma, in previous ones. By this simplistic yardstick, I must have been a foreign investor in at least a couple of my earlier births!The colour of money changed from ‘financial’ to ‘strategic’, but the scepticism never ceased. Why is the Indian market so small? Why are Indian regulations so weak and confusing? Why is there no protection for intellectual property rights? Why does the Indian consumer steal our signals?

Why do Indian courts take so long to decide anything? Why do Indians prefer tacky Bollywood films to Hollywood’s masterpieces? Why are Indian commentators and politicians so free with their words and criticism? Why don’t you have stricter libel and defamation laws? Why do we have to use Indian satellites only? Why are long overdue policy decisions put on hold by ever-so-frequent elections? Why is India’s bureaucracy so timid?

Why are India’s bankers so conservative? Why are the interest rates so high? Why are all policies made in English? How do Indians speak such good English? Why does such abject poverty coexist with such immense amounts of corporate wealth in India? Why don’t you want more dollars to come into your country? How come you have built such an efficient capital market? But then, why don’t you have a bond market? Why do you control the prices of oil and cable TV? Why is the government trying, but failing, to ban jeans in colleges?

Why do your social clubs insist on western attire? Why don’t you allow more foreign players in your cricket league? Why do you have such old politicians in key ministries? Invariably, almost every such ‘why conversation’ would end with: ‘Oh, but it’s not like that in China-or Korea, or Thailand, or Dubai!’Frankly, I could never escape the feeling that India was just a ‘hedging instrument’ for the investors. While they put serious money and conviction into China, Korea, Thailand and Dubai, their attitude towards India was, to use their terminology, somewhat ‘derivative’ or ‘collateral’. India was a bit too complex and inexplicable for them, yet India had some of the dynamics which could, one odd day, make for an economic superpower.

So even if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand the country, they dared not bypass it, since India had mysterious potential: it could be the quaint outlier, or ‘multi-bagger’, in their portfolio. It made sense to ‘play blind’ on India-put in some money, but not bother too much with it. If you were dealt a good hand, you could make a killing; otherwise, your ‘max downside’ was to simply write off the investment as a ‘hedging cost’ for bets taken elsewhere in Asia.
A question began to beg for an answer: do these foreigners even ‘get India’?

Raghav Bahl