Indian broadcast network Viacom18 is well placed to ramp up expansion plans in 2015, after moving into profitability last year while also gaining a wealthy new backer – the country’s biggest private company, Reliance Industries Limited.

Viacom18 – a JV owned by Reliance-controlled domestic media group, Network18, and international major, Viacom – has focused on building out kids and entertainment properties since bursting onto the scene in late 2007 with its Hindi entertainment channel, Colors.

Group CEO Sudhanshu Vats wants to keep it that way, for the foreseeable future at least, deploying money and manpower to accelerate development of current assets and franchises across broadcast, digital and experiential platforms.

It’s a bid to keep pace with new ways to consume media and entertainment, rather than extend into new genres to match the breadth of longer established peers such as Sony, Star and Zee.

For a relative latecomer like Viacom18, a new sports or movie channel represents a costlier and riskier proposition than alternative prospects such as regional entertainment or digital distribution, Vats contends, highlighting the latter examples as areas where Viacom18 is well placed to make headway over the next one to two years.

“We are now on a very strong profitable growth agenda,” Vats tells Media Business Asia. “Our existing brands are now generating cash and strong Ebitdas. That gives you confidence. There is an existing cash engine in place, and strong partners.”

In the meantime, the company has continued to add more targeted offerings within its existing genres, including new launches such as MTV Indies, focusing on independent music and culture, and Sonic, an action adventure channel targeting young boys.

“We’ve got both psychographic and demographic segmentation happening,” Vats says.

Longer-term meanwhile, an evolving landscape could open up new opportunities in the future.

“Identifying and plugging white spaces is one of our key thrusts,” Vats explains.

“We should be playing in movies but should that be a movie channel? Maybe or maybe not. These are the questions we need to keep asking and that’s the piece we need to keep working at.”

REGIONAL EXPANSION

One immediate priority is adding more local language offerings beyond English and Hindi. The broadcaster is in the process of bringing five entertainment channels into the Colors fold that had been purchased – with help from Reliance – from regional player Eenadu TV, delivering extra heft and scale.

Some of these channels have already adopted the Colors name, with others to follow suit by the end of the month, ahead of further investment in marketing, content and distribution.

“You will see a very clear rebranding, and getting awareness on everything we are doing around that, but it’s not just that,” Vats says. “It will be followed by a strong revamp or overhaul of our content in each of these feeds.”

In general, this means fresh stories and new series, in addition to more premieres, tentpole properties and event-based programming, including existing formats used by Colors in Hindi such as Dancing with the Stars and Big Boss, helping consolidate a new multi-market positioning for Viacom18’s flagship property.

Regional channels with a relatively strong market position, such as the Kannada offering settled in a number two slot, should experience a more evolutionary change, although Vats wants a more disruptive approach for weaker channels in relatively large markets, such as Bangla.

Funds are also available for the smaller regional markets, including Gujarati where Viacom18 has inherited the only local language entertainment channel, as well as Oriya.

Vats is applying a similar split across Viacom18 as a whole, to foster the development of more segmented offerings that should become more valuable as digital cable and online platforms provide viewers with more choice over time.

“I would say 70-80% of our investments are for today, but 20-30% is for more niche fragmented offerings, which are for tomorrow,” he says. “Even in regional entertainment, no-one else is there in Gujarati. It’s a small market, about US$4-5 million in ad revenue but that’s another space we want to grow.”

At the same time, Vats is also optimistic about near-term growth in non-traditional revenue.

Two areas stand out: a live events business leveraging new and existing franchises that he hopes will contribute 10% of turnover within five years from about 3% today; as well as different ways to monetize content with both new and existing audiences via mobile networks, in tandem with an upcoming 4G broadband service from Reliance.

Both opportunities benefit from strong brands and franchises that can thrive beyond the TV set, another of Vats’ key priorities alongside a bigger presence in regional and digital media.

“We want to be both media and entertainment, not only a broadcasting company,” he says. “We need to start building ecosystems in and around our programs, our properties, our content.”

It’s too soon to go into detail about Viacom18’s mobile plans, Vat says, but the company’s ties to Reliance should provide a helpful boost in the market.

Like digital cable, mobile monetization for TV content is still nascent, although Vats feels that revenue could start to flow soon. “While the two will happen almost hand-in-hand, the mobile piece could grow very quickly,” he says.

“It requires less physical infrastructure. By definition, physical infrastructure takes time."