I believe in creating trends: Kalanithi Maran

Kalanithi Maran , owner of the Sun TV empire, stunned the aviation sector by beating out well-known names in Corporate India to emerge victorious in the race to buy SpiceJet. Mr Maran, whose Sun Network is one of the dominant names in the Indian television entertainment scene, has no experience in aviation. Nor has he partnered with somebody in the aviation business to do the deal. In this interview with ET, he explains the reasons behind his interest in the sector and his plans for SpiceJet. Excerpts:

Currently, you’re running a company with perhaps one of the best profit margins in the media and entertainment space and now you’re getting into a sector where profitability is hard to come by. Why aviation?
I look at the opportunity, at what’s going to happen in the future. Currently, the industry carries four million passengers per month, growing at the rate of 15%. We are seeing the purchasing power percolating to smaller cities. I strongly believe that if you have affordable pricing, you can do mass transportation in India, with infrastructure and new airports also coming up.

But people are sceptical of your entry into this space without past experience or core competency.
I am the chairman of the company, not the CEO. It is the CEO who requires core competency. The chairman requires foresight. I don’t believe in industry’s perception, I believe in creating trends.

When I started satellite television, people laughed at me saying Tamil cannot be in satellite television, it’s too costly. When I started radio, they said television has come, radio is a dead business. When I started DTH, they said there are too many big players. We are now 5.5 million subscribers strong. If I’m going to follow the herd, I’ll be one among the crowd. Let me be clear. All my steps are calculated, I am not going blindly with intuition. I never wanted to do it when oil prices were at $140 per barrel.
15/06/10 Hemamalini Venkatraman & Chandra Ranganathan/Economic Times

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Categories: New Jun 2010, SpiceJet Jun 2010