Business Buzz 2016

Sports bio pics come of age – 4 get released in 2016: Bollywood is the ultimate escapade in the world. It has the glitz, the drama, the tears, the mandatory songs, some much staged fights and lo and behold, a very happy ending!

No wonder the purists and the true cinema lovers wring their hands in despair watching the movies that bollywood churns out. But bollywood seems to have turned the corner. It has discovered a new genre that radiates promise – sports bio pics.

Rather than see sports as a competitors for entertainment, Bollywood has started seeing sports as a partner- in-progress. Bollywood and sports seem to feed off each other admirably and it augurs well both for Indian cinema and for Indian sport.

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Only a day left for 2016 to walk into the history books. As we warmly embrace the new, vibrant, exciting and hopefully a much better 2017 let’s do a quick recap of business events that defined 2016.

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Indian cinema will get good and believable story lines and Indian sport will get the publicity and attention that it desperately needs. Indian film stars are iconic and many aspire to be like the film stars and many mimic the roles too. A young person getting inspired by sports films is a very healthy sign and that would increase the pool of people who play sports.

Attractive packaging, marketing and live telecast of sports and franchisee based sports leagues have seen the popularity of sports like kabbadi, hockey, football, badminton, wrestling, tennis go up dramatically and come close to the viewership and popularity of the sports behemoth – Indian cricket.

Any other sport equaling or even coming close to the popularity of Indian cricket was thought to be impossible and even unthinkable. But with-in a matter of half a decade the Indian television and Indian cinema has seen to it that other sports grow and prosper and that is a very healthy sign. Movies are a great way to document and tell a great true story that will inspire generations of movie watchers.

In all four sports bio-pics have been released this year.
Budhia Singh – Born to Run is based on the life of Budhia Singh, the world's youngest marathon runner, who has already run a mind blogging 48 marathons.

Interestingly Budhia Singh started to run at the tender age of age of four. The other three sports bio – pics include Azhar, the story about the troubled child of Indian cricket,

Mohd Azharuddin the famed cricketer who went from rags to riches and then found that his world had turned topsy turvy. Azhar is a fascinating story of a national hero suddenly becoming the villain and a persona-non-grata.

The last two sports bio-pics that were released got rave attention, reviews and proved to be money spinners. M S Dhoni, the untold story made even non cricket followers sit up and take notice of a boy from Jharkhand who with his heroics made the world of cricket his very own. Dhoni’s grit and determination to succeed when faced with innumerable troubles and problems continue to inspire hoards to Indians.

Finally the recently released Dangal (Wrestler) had become the box office darling by grossing 150 crores at the turnstiles within five days of its release. Dangal the wrestling bio-pic is the true life story of Mahavir Singh Phogat, who trained his daughters Babita Kumari and Geeta Phogat to become world class wrestlers.

Geeta Phogat became India’s first women wrestler to win gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in 52 kg category while her sister Babita Kumari won the silver in 55 kg category.

Dangal is a touching story of a male chauvinist who overcomes his prejudices, biases and stereotypes to train his daughters to be what he could not become – world class wrestlers who bring laurels and medals for India.

JIO 4G launched on 1st September 2016

Reliance Industries made a dramatic splash into the dog-eat-dog, business of mobile telecommunications services with its ultra-new offering JIO4G (Life). This time around Reliance seemed to have worked out its strategy. The entry was spectacular and JIO hogged media headlines.

JIO had many unique propositions. JIO the 4G SIM was offered free first till 31st of December 2016 and later till 31st of March 2017.Unique marketing initiatives have seen to it that more than 5 crore JIO SIMs were activated by December 1st 2016 in a short period of 90 days and the total SIM activations are expected to cross 10 crores by 31st March 2017.

The uniqueness of JIO SIM activation was the speed at which the SIM was activated. It took all of 15 minutes with the technology playing a very pivotal role. KYC (Know your customers) details were accessed instantaneously using the customers’ Aadhar card number and thumb impression and PRESTO the SIM was activated and the customers could experience 4G Speeds.

Other Clever marketing techniques like offering its 4G compatible mobiles LYF series (Life) at a very cheap price (a loss leader pricing strategy) with innovative add alongs like Jio-fi wireless devices have also lead to the sustained interest with JIO 4G service. Customers are now waiting to see if Mukesh Ambani will live up tohis promise of delivering world classinternet speeds at rock bottom prices.

The sordid tale of Ratan Tata VS Cyrus Mistry
On 24th October 2016, the Indian business community received the biggest shock of the year. The board of Tata Sons Ltd, one of the India’s biggest mega corporation sun ceremoniously sacked Cyrus P Mistry its chairman, just four years after he took over from Ratan Tata.

Tata sons named Ratan Tata as interim chairman for four months without citing any reasons. Since then, Tata Sons and Cyrus Mistry have exchanged charges of corporate governance violations and incompetence in an increasingly bitter and violent fashion.

It is very disturbing and heart wrenching to see the acrimonious battle for supremacy and the bitter way in which the battle is being waged. It is sad to see the fair name of TATA group known for ethical behaviour, value systems, Integrity, and good governance being ridiculed and made fun of.

All said and done it would have been better if Ratan Tata and Cyrus Mistry had settled their differences amicably in private and not wash their dirty linen in public and become the butt of corporate ridicule.

Wishing all the readers of The Hans India a very happy, prosperous, eventful and joyful 2017.