Our guest for todays’ BMI session was Mr. KANDASWAMY BHARATHAN, the Joint Managing Director of Kavithalayaa. He was also the Executive Producer of various Award-winning films such as Roja, Annamalai, Muthu and many more under the Kavithalayaa banner. He is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. He has spent 12 years in the Chemical and Automotive sectors before joining Kavithalayaa, a well-known Film & Television production house based in Chennai, serving the company in various leadership roles for the past 26 years. He was the first one who has designed India’s first software for the movie industry. Currently, he is associating with Indian Institute of Management (IIM) , Ahmedabad and Indian School of Business (ISB) an adjunct Faculty. in IIM. Mr. Bharathan has also written few case studies on the Indian movie industry, highlighting the business and decision-making challenges in the creative sector.
Our speaker began his speech by saying that, in any industry, we talk about innovation, inspiration, vision, expertise, trend setting as the road to excellence. But the actual excellence is defined as the high level of performance and consistency over extended period.
Film industry being the hallmark of entertainment industry has undergone drastic changes from the time of its inception up till now. He talked about the contributions of veteran Late K Balachander, Satyajit Ray and A R Rahman as how they have excelled in this industry with their extra ordinary storytelling and films that portrayed the socio-political conditions of India.
Our Speaker talked about the creative excellence as the subject matter expertise. Choosing a field and mastering that field is what can make a vivid veteran. We need to constantly break ourselves to mould ourselves better and to innovate.
The points like keeping up with up to date technology, identifying appropriate technology for given requirement, adapting to new technologies and integrating tech and creativity were important to race. He expounded how the idea of Multiplex came into existence. As necessity is the mother of invention, the introduction of TV boxes forced Hollywood to change the way cinema experience was given. The evening outing was redefined
Managerial or business excellence was a sum of people, marketing, production, and strategic excellence. The movie “Roja” is a notable evidence of production excellence using PERT and CPM charts to complete production in just 28 days. “Lagaan” crew used GANTT chart.
Coming to the strategic excellence, our speaker said that in film industry, the art, business, and tech should meet to have strategic advantages. He urged the students to adopt a Blue ocean Strategy and to avoid the red ocean with competitive sharks. Identify the new, unconcentrated market space, for niche segments and fill the gaps that were ignored to be profitable and to enjoy the growth opportunities.
It was quite an interesting session with lot of unknown insights from the flashy, glamorous film industry.
Jeneve Vinolia P,
F19 – BMI.
“I was astonished to see that management techniques are used in Film Industry too”
– Suju, F19
“I liked the Blue Ocean Strategy and its importance”
– Johanna, F19