Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Ashish Hemrajani

Transcript

Ashish Hemrajani · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
0:06
Speaker 1: My guest today is a shees Hemra Johnny, founder in
0:11
Speaker 1: CEO of Book My Show Hashish. What is book my Show?
0:17
Speaker 2: You know a lot of people have asked me that
0:18
Speaker 2: question and it's it was so hard to describe what
0:22
Speaker 2: we actually did. But we started off as the let
0:28
Speaker 2: me use an analogy, and we started off as the
0:30
Speaker 2: Fandango of India and turned into the Fandango and probably
0:35
Speaker 2: Ticketmaster Access of India, and today we are like also
0:40
Speaker 2: the Live Nation and Age of India and then a
0:44
Speaker 2: bit of what OBG and IMDb dos. So if you
0:48
Speaker 2: put all of them together and and your mulgamate all
0:51
Speaker 2: of them, that's that's what we do, which is we're
0:54
Speaker 2: a technology company with starter off is a data and
0:57
Speaker 2: a ticketing company. We install software. We're now a live
1:02
Speaker 2: events and promotions company. We're also into infrastructure for live events.
1:08
Speaker 2: We do reviews and rating, and we also have real
1:12
Speaker 2: estate for live events. So that's what we do.
1:15
Speaker 1: Let's start talking about India because a lot of people
1:18
Speaker 1: don't live there, don't understand what's going on. What do
1:21
Speaker 1: we know? It's a country, there's a lot of technology advancement.
1:25
Speaker 1: They're also what we believe, which may be falsely. There
1:29
Speaker 1: are a lot of poor people. We have someone who's
1:31
Speaker 1: running it, Mody, who is somewhat authoritarian. Give us the
1:36
Speaker 1: landscape in India.
1:38
Speaker 2: You know, I can take a step back and probably
1:42
Speaker 2: be a bit of an authority here because I'm like
1:45
Speaker 2: the forest gum guy. I live in a five hundred
1:48
Speaker 2: meter radius. I was born in Mumbai. I was born
1:51
Speaker 2: in Bombay, and now I live in Mumbai. And that's
1:53
Speaker 2: the funny part about India. I haven't changed cities, but
1:56
Speaker 2: they've changed the name of my city. Okay.
1:58
Speaker 1: I got to go there because I been there with
2:00
Speaker 1: most like Italian cities, they always pronounced said Friends and
2:05
Speaker 1: we called it Florence in the US. Are you telling
2:08
Speaker 1: me that they used to call it Bombay? Now they
2:11
Speaker 1: call it Mumbai. Why did they change it?
2:15
Speaker 2: So it's not just in Bombay. But they did that
2:18
Speaker 2: with Madras which became Chennai, and Calcutta which became Kolkata,
2:23
Speaker 2: and Bangalore which became Bangaluru. And the reason is that
2:27
Speaker 2: all of these names were not the original names when
2:30
Speaker 2: the British ruled in there and it was a colony,
2:35
Speaker 2: they gave it very anglicized names, and so what happened
2:38
Speaker 2: is that when the governments over the years then changed
2:42
Speaker 2: it back to the original name, which was the nomenclature
2:45
Speaker 2: of what the cities were named by. So they've gone
2:48
Speaker 2: back to the roots of what these cities were. It's
2:50
Speaker 2: just that our generation which was born and I'm fifty one,
2:53
Speaker 2: going to turn fifty two this year, I always knew
2:56
Speaker 2: this as Bombay because that's the city I was born
2:58
Speaker 2: in and I tend to still out of have but
3:00
Speaker 2: call it Bombay. But it is Mumbai. And the name
3:03
Speaker 2: Mumbai comes from uh Uh the deity Mumbai, Mumbai Davi
3:08
Speaker 2: and that's how the city got its name. And for
3:12
Speaker 2: for a long period of time while the Brits were here,
3:15
Speaker 2: it was called Bombay and now it's back to Mumbai.
3:17
Speaker 2: So that's that's the history.
3:18
Speaker 1: I interrupted.
3:19
Speaker 3: You're talking about the area you grew up in five hundred.
3:22
Speaker 2: Five hundred meters, so I'm like the forest gum guy.
3:25
Speaker 2: I I was born in in a in an area
3:28
Speaker 2: in Bombay called Juhu, which is by the beach, and
3:32
Speaker 2: I made the big move eleven years ago five hundred
3:35
Speaker 2: meters down the road. So my parents home, my sister's home,
3:39
Speaker 2: my home. We're all on a strip on the beach,
3:42
Speaker 2: five hundred meters away from each other. And and so
3:46
Speaker 2: for me, this is this is where I live, this
3:49
Speaker 2: is where I was born, and it's it's always been
3:53
Speaker 2: been home for me, and and and so with respect
3:57
Speaker 2: to India, I I always tell people that are at
4:02
Speaker 2: an outside in view or a westerners view of India
4:06
Speaker 2: has always been India has twenty seven states, seven Union territories,
4:13
Speaker 2: and everybody knows India as you know, each state is
4:17
Speaker 2: like a country in itself, different culture, different clothing, different food, language,
4:23
Speaker 2: the way people look and behave and feel. It's almost
4:27
Speaker 2: like Europe, but stitch together like America, and it's one country.
4:32
Speaker 2: But that's a western view of India. And without being
4:36
Speaker 2: politically correct in this case, let me let me tell
4:40
Speaker 2: you my version of India, because you know I'm Indian,
4:43
Speaker 2: I was born and raised here. Is that I view
4:45
Speaker 2: India as four Indias. There's there's one India, which I
4:52
Speaker 2: call the London of India, which is English speaking, private healthcare,
4:59
Speaker 2: private d education, studied abroad or studied in premier institutes,
5:04
Speaker 2: or and is the highest purchasing power parity in the
5:09
Speaker 2: world and could probably be the top five percentile or
5:15
Speaker 2: ten percentile of wealth in the world. Homes in London,
5:18
Speaker 2: homes in Dubai, New York, lived anywhere, travel everywhere, and
5:23
Speaker 2: that cohort of people I would say would be about
5:27
Speaker 2: three million to four million Indians, which I would call
5:32
Speaker 2: the London of India. And what had happened that India
5:37
Speaker 2: was a very closed economy for years, right since nineteen
5:40
Speaker 2: forty seven after the British has left and we got
5:43
Speaker 2: the independence four till nineteen nineties, India for about forty
5:49
Speaker 2: fifty years was a very closed economy and therefore anybody
5:54
Speaker 2: that worked the government and could get licenses and things
5:58
Speaker 2: like that would be able to succeed in business. And
6:01
Speaker 2: therefore there was a huge concentration of wealth with very
6:05
Speaker 2: few people in very few families. And what happened was
6:08
Speaker 2: that this became a very concentrated It wasn't that India
6:12
Speaker 2: generally was worth. There was wealth and the country was
6:15
Speaker 2: growing purely because of the population, but it was concentrated
6:19
Speaker 2: in the hands of a very few. And the next
6:24
Speaker 2: cohre of people of the demographic I would call is
6:26
Speaker 2: the United Kingdom of India. So you've got the London
6:29
Speaker 2: of India, and then you've got the United Kingdom of India.
6:32
Speaker 2: I would say this is about thirty million to thirty
6:35
Speaker 2: five million Indians, which I call the United Kingdom of India. Again,
6:37
Speaker 2: English speaking, private healthcare, private education, built businesses here, studied
6:43
Speaker 2: in private institutes. English is the primary language. There are
6:47
Speaker 2: about two hundred and fifty to three hundred million Indians
6:50
Speaker 2: that speak in English as the first of the second language.
6:55
Speaker 2: But this cohort of people, which is about forty million Indians,
7:00
Speaker 2: controlled today or have ownership to about sixty to sixty
7:04
Speaker 2: five percent of the GDP or the wealth of the country. Now,
7:07
Speaker 2: this till about fifteen years ago was about ninety plus
7:11
Speaker 2: or ninety five plus percent twealth was concentrated in the
7:14
Speaker 2: arm in the hands of the top the top demographic
7:19
Speaker 2: cohot of the country. And then there's the next three
7:23
Speaker 2: hundred to three fifty million Indians, which I call the
7:25
Speaker 2: Brazil of India, which is the emerging middle class. Till
7:29
Speaker 2: about fifteen years ago, the average monthly household income to
7:35
Speaker 2: this group of people was about one hundred dollars a month,
7:39
Speaker 2: and in the last fifteen years this has grown to
7:41
Speaker 2: about five hundred dollars a month, So it's five x
7:44
Speaker 2: the income from one hundred dollars to about five hundred dollars.
7:49
Speaker 2: And this has happened only in the last fifteen years. Now,
7:52
Speaker 2: if you were to do a purchasing power parity comparison
7:55
Speaker 2: to the Western world, you just have to multiply this
7:59
Speaker 2: by four or five. So what is your livelihood or
8:02
Speaker 2: your living standard in the US at two thousand to
8:05
Speaker 2: two thousand, five hundred dollars, is what is equivalent to
8:09
Speaker 2: five hundred dollars in India. I call the McDonald index,
8:12
Speaker 2: the beer index, the whatever index that you want to
8:15
Speaker 2: call it. So if you are a family income of
8:19
Speaker 2: five hundred dollars, it's equal to a two thousand to
8:21
Speaker 2: two thousand, five hundred dollars in terms of what your
8:23
Speaker 2: lifestyle what it gets you in India. And this didn't
8:26
Speaker 2: exist till about fifty In the last fifteen years, it's changed.
8:33
Speaker 2: And there are reasons, and I'll come to that, and
8:34
Speaker 2: we'll come to primarisumodi and some of the specifics as
8:39
Speaker 2: to why this has happened. And then the rest of India,
8:41
Speaker 2: which I called unfortunately and again, like I said, I
8:44
Speaker 2: don't want to be politically correct. Here is the Africa
8:46
Speaker 2: of India, which is underserved, undernourished, over exploited by the
8:50
Speaker 2: schmucks and douchebags like the London and United Kingdom of India.
8:54
Speaker 2: And that's India in a nutshell. And what we do
8:57
Speaker 2: as a company or as a group of people, we
9:00
Speaker 2: cater to all four Indias. We cater to the London
9:03
Speaker 2: of India, the United Kingdom of India, the Brazil of
9:06
Speaker 2: India and the Africa of India all in one nature.
9:11
Speaker 2: And coming to to what's changed over the years where
9:16
Speaker 2: this middle this Brazil of India or the middle middle
9:20
Speaker 2: class of India has been growing so rapidly, and the
9:24
Speaker 2: United Kingdom of India or the upper middle classes is
9:28
Speaker 2: really sort of scaling up. And then the rich obviously
9:31
Speaker 2: on are creating more wealth and it's a trickle down
9:35
Speaker 2: effect which is coming to the rest of the country.
9:37
Speaker 2: Has happened in the last fifteen years. And then it's
9:40
Speaker 2: largely driven by the stability of the government. We've got
9:45
Speaker 2: a Prime Minister who's who's pretty and very well decided.
9:48
Speaker 2: He's very decisive, he's got a majority in the upper House,
9:51
Speaker 2: and the Lower House, and as far as we're concerned,
9:56
Speaker 2: we're democratically. It's the largest democracy. America is the greatest democracy.
10:01
Speaker 2: Whether you like it or no, you have an electoral
10:05
Speaker 2: people vote. You may have your differences, you may be democratic,
10:10
Speaker 2: you may be a Republican. But you voted a president today.
10:14
Speaker 2: There will be a new president tomorrow. You've had past
10:17
Speaker 2: presidents and then everybody lives with it. Same as the
10:20
Speaker 2: case with India. It's a different electoral system, but it's
10:23
Speaker 2: the world's largest democracy. And what this government and what
10:29
Speaker 2: primes to Moodia has been able to do, there have
10:32
Speaker 2: been three big things that happened. Is this country which
10:36
Speaker 2: a lot of people outside don't know, don't seem to understand.
10:41
Speaker 2: I have no reason or incentive to understand. Number One,
10:46
Speaker 2: we had one of the most complex tax laws anywhere
10:49
Speaker 2: in the world, which were central and fiduciary, a very
10:53
Speaker 2: bizarre tax law system which existed for years and years,
10:58
Speaker 2: and as me growing up, in the last fifteen years,
11:02
Speaker 2: we have now got a tax law which is called
11:04
Speaker 2: the GSD, which is the Goods and Service Tax GSD.
11:07
Speaker 2: It's a common code you have, it's been simplified even further.
11:12
Speaker 2: You've got a five percent, you've got eighteen percent, and
11:17
Speaker 2: you've got a tax which is for luxury goods. There's
11:21
Speaker 2: three tax systems and it's all applied on consumption tax.
11:25
Speaker 2: Everybody pays GSD on everything that you consume in voice bill,
11:29
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. Earlier, every city, every district, every state,
11:38
Speaker 2: center would all have different tax laws. So they unified
11:42
Speaker 2: this tax law and it took a long time in
11:44
Speaker 2: India for the legal system, the electoral getting people on
11:48
Speaker 2: board changing the law for it to come into place.
11:51
Speaker 2: So we've got a common tax law which is between
11:54
Speaker 2: the state and center and everywhere it's a common tax code.
11:58
Speaker 2: The other thing that happened was that over a billion
12:02
Speaker 2: Indians today have something called the Unique Identification scheme. This
12:08
Speaker 2: was where you get a card where you have your name,
12:11
Speaker 2: you have a fingerprint, you have a barcode, you have
12:15
Speaker 2: an address, and you have an identity, which a lot
12:18
Speaker 2: of billions, millions of Indians, hundreds of millions of me
12:21
Speaker 2: didn't have an identity. The only way you had an
12:24
Speaker 2: identity was if you had a passport. And just like
12:27
Speaker 2: America and more accentuated in India were very few Indians
12:31
Speaker 2: had a passport, a very small minority at best, the
12:34
Speaker 2: London and the United Kingdom of India had a passport.
12:37
Speaker 2: Nobody else had a passport, and hence you had no identity.
12:42
Speaker 2: Even though you were an Indian citizen, you don't have
12:44
Speaker 2: an identity. The only identity people had was something called
12:48
Speaker 2: the ration card, and the ration card was something that
12:51
Speaker 2: came from the Eastern Bloc where you had your monthly
12:58
Speaker 2: food and groceries which you could go to government run
13:01
Speaker 2: ration shops. In my time, in my time, my living,
13:06
Speaker 2: you know existence that you had a ration card. So
13:10
Speaker 2: the help at home, are cooks at home or your
13:13
Speaker 2: driver or the help at home, they didn't have a
13:16
Speaker 2: ration card because they didn't have an identity. So at best,
13:19
Speaker 2: because you didn't need to go to the ration shop,
13:21
Speaker 2: they would take your ration card and go to the
13:23
Speaker 2: ration shop to get their monthly groceries at a discard.
13:27
Speaker 2: So that was the purpose of a ration card. But
13:29
Speaker 2: outside of that, millions, hundreds of millions of Indians didn't
13:33
Speaker 2: have an identity. This was the greatest unique identification scheme
13:39
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world at scale, which covered close to
13:41
Speaker 2: one point one billion or maybe one point two billion Indians,
13:45
Speaker 2: or one point four billion ins in because they were
13:47
Speaker 2: below eighteen, all had a unique identification scheme, had a
13:51
Speaker 2: unique identification card. And on top of that, what the
13:55
Speaker 2: government did was create a unified payment scheme, the UPI,
14:01
Speaker 2: which is basically fourteen to sixteen nationalized in foreign banks
14:05
Speaker 2: that ran a not for profit conglomerate, which created a
14:10
Speaker 2: platform where I can send a payment to you, even
14:15
Speaker 2: if it's one rupe which is one hundred today it's
14:18
Speaker 2: nearly close to a one hundred troop piece to the dollar,
14:21
Speaker 2: I can send it to you as a peer to
14:24
Speaker 2: payer or make a payment without paying an interchange fee.
14:27
Speaker 2: So for years and years, WESA, MasterCard MX and all
14:32
Speaker 2: the credit card companies put together didn't have cards more
14:34
Speaker 2: than twenty two to twenty four million cards in the country.
14:38
Speaker 2: And then India brought about the debit card and the
14:41
Speaker 2: ATM machine and maybe you had about two hundred to
14:44
Speaker 2: three hundred million people. Today over a billion Indians transact
14:48
Speaker 2: over the UPI, which is the unique identification scheme linked
14:52
Speaker 2: to the UPI, which is a United Payment centerface. So
14:56
Speaker 2: if today I'm a business and you can make a
14:59
Speaker 2: payment on my business or you go to a restaurant
15:01
Speaker 2: and you pay through a QR code or your mobile,
15:04
Speaker 2: you get charged a very small interchange fee which is
15:06
Speaker 2: point two five percent. But if I'm doing a peer
15:09
Speaker 2: to peer and I'm paying you from me to you,
15:12
Speaker 2: from my bank account to yours, and I can do
15:14
Speaker 2: it over Google pay, I can do it over Facebook,
15:18
Speaker 2: I can do it over WhatsApp pay. There's something. All
15:21
Speaker 2: they do is link to an API which is on
15:23
Speaker 2: the United Payment c Interface. What it's done is all
15:27
Speaker 2: government incentive schemes, everything that the government gives, any incentives
15:33
Speaker 2: that are given to the middle class or the or
15:36
Speaker 2: the lower income group. There was so much friction and
15:39
Speaker 2: corruption in the country that if there was a dollar
15:43
Speaker 2: that was intended for somebody, not even ten cents would
15:47
Speaker 2: reach them. Today, if there's a dollar intended for somebody,
15:51
Speaker 2: the whole dollar reaches that person because it goes straight
15:53
Speaker 2: into the neo bank account. You don't need to have
15:55
Speaker 2: a checking bank account or a minimum bank. You can
15:58
Speaker 2: create a new bank. So what is done this intersection
16:02
Speaker 2: of having a common tax law, having an identification scheme
16:07
Speaker 2: linked to your payment system, where over a billion or
16:11
Speaker 2: one point one billion people Indians today use this and
16:15
Speaker 2: any kid that has a mobile phone can use. This
16:17
Speaker 2: has created this environment where there is this emerging middle
16:22
Speaker 2: class and this wealth that is now trickling down. And
16:24
Speaker 2: that's what I think the Government of the day and
16:27
Speaker 2: Prime Minister Moodia has been able to achieve on the
16:29
Speaker 2: on the back of which a lot of us can
16:31
Speaker 2: succeed in doing what we do.
16:33
Speaker 1: Okay, just a couple of backdill questions those of us
16:37
Speaker 1: who are not India savvy, we hear about the cast
16:41
Speaker 1: system that this laid date to what degree is at
16:44
Speaker 1: an issue?
16:47
Speaker 2: Look, it is an issue. Let me let me not
16:50
Speaker 2: shy away from that. But let's get back to the history.
16:54
Speaker 2: A lot of people know Catholicism or Judaism or Islam's religion,
17:00
Speaker 2: Hinduism is actually not a religion. It's a way of life, right,
17:03
Speaker 2: It's not a religion. There are deities and people call
17:06
Speaker 2: it a religion. It's actually a way of life. And
17:09
Speaker 2: the way of life was bent was was was created
17:12
Speaker 2: on tasks that everybody did. Your tasks were, Hey, you
17:17
Speaker 2: were supposed to be a priest, You're supposed to be
17:19
Speaker 2: a cleaner, you're supposed to be a teacher, you're a goldsmith,
17:21
Speaker 2: you're a blacksmith. And these were tasks that were built
17:25
Speaker 2: out for people that could work in a unified scheme
17:29
Speaker 2: or a unified manner in villages, in towns, in cities
17:34
Speaker 2: and India, if you go back to the history of India,
17:36
Speaker 2: it was a very wealthy part of the world where
17:38
Speaker 2: there were kingdoms and it was not a country, but
17:41
Speaker 2: there were various kingdoms which which were in this region
17:43
Speaker 2: which was the Indoor China sort of uh you know, kingdom.
17:50
Speaker 2: And over the years, as you know, colonization happened. There
17:57
Speaker 2: was a lot of invasion that happened in this in
17:59
Speaker 2: this part of the world. This was bastardized in a
18:05
Speaker 2: manner where it got created into a cast system to
18:08
Speaker 2: stay that if I'm a priest or if I'm learned
18:12
Speaker 2: or I'm educated, but you are not and you're doing
18:15
Speaker 2: a task, it became a cast system. For years and years,
18:20
Speaker 2: it was a real problem within the country where there
18:24
Speaker 2: was untouchability. You can't eat from here, you can't drink
18:28
Speaker 2: from there, you can't be in the same elevator, you
18:31
Speaker 2: can't do that, and it was it was racism at
18:33
Speaker 2: its core. You will find that in pockets still you
18:37
Speaker 2: will find them find that in a lot of ways
18:41
Speaker 2: where there's a hierarchy. It's no different from Southeast Asia,
18:45
Speaker 2: where you find hierarchy in in corporate environments or in genders,
18:49
Speaker 2: but it's not as accentuated because everybody's educated and you know,
18:54
Speaker 2: but it exists if you go to a large many
18:58
Speaker 2: countries in the in the Far eas Having said that,
19:01
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to defend or justify what's taking place
19:03
Speaker 2: in India because I don't stand for it. But it's
19:06
Speaker 2: changed dramatically, and it's changing a lot with the wealth
19:10
Speaker 2: trickling down with the things that are taking place in
19:14
Speaker 2: the city. And I think the greatest democracy of this
19:19
Speaker 2: country has not been through the election process, and I'm
19:22
Speaker 2: not trying to undermine that, but it's been through removing
19:25
Speaker 2: the asymmetry in information and that has come about through
19:29
Speaker 2: the cheapest mobile data market in the world. Everybody in
19:34
Speaker 2: this country. There are more than a billion data connections
19:38
Speaker 2: and today it's remove the asymmetry of information and today
19:42
Speaker 2: everybody has access to that in your regional language on
19:45
Speaker 2: access to information, rights, pricing, arbitrage, or anything that you need,
19:51
Speaker 2: and that's blurring the lines of this artificial hierarchy or
19:57
Speaker 2: cost system that has been created. So I keep telling
20:00
Speaker 2: people that the rate of changes parts will then change itself.
20:03
Speaker 2: And what's taken something fifty years to change in our
20:06
Speaker 2: time or maybe three hundred years before will those molds
20:10
Speaker 2: would get broken faster. And I see in the next
20:12
Speaker 2: decade this will completely eradicate itself. But it exists in pockets.
20:18
Speaker 2: But if you come to a city like Bombay or
20:21
Speaker 2: a deli or a bangalow, it won't be over it.
20:23
Speaker 2: You won't see it. It exists in little things which I
20:27
Speaker 2: don't appreciate. A lot of offices and places will have
20:31
Speaker 2: elevators for staff and elevators for executives or regular elevators,
20:37
Speaker 2: and toilets and things like that, which has become a
20:41
Speaker 2: part of the way of life here and nobody really
20:44
Speaker 2: bothers because it's all right, But it bothers me being
20:49
Speaker 2: born and raised here and in our organization or our company,
20:52
Speaker 2: you won't find any of that, like any sort of
20:55
Speaker 2: differentiation or segregation, and elevators and toilets, and where people
20:59
Speaker 2: eat in the cafeteria or the kind of food that
21:01
Speaker 2: is served. It's all common code to everybody.
21:13
Speaker 3: Okay, you paint a very positive growing picture. What are
21:18
Speaker 3: the challenges going forward for India.
21:22
Speaker 2: I think uplifting this entire demographic is the responsibility of
21:31
Speaker 2: the London and United Kingdom of India. It is so
21:34
Speaker 2: we don't need to look to the US to serve Africa.
21:38
Speaker 2: You know, everybody says, let's look at the western world.
21:41
Speaker 2: Let's look at Europe, Japan, Australia, the Western world two
21:46
Speaker 2: do good for Africa. I think India's problems or India's
21:50
Speaker 2: challenges can be solved by Indians. Like I said, the London,
21:55
Speaker 2: United Kingdom, the Brazil and Africa India co exist in
21:59
Speaker 2: a one clock radius. If you're in my office, or
22:01
Speaker 2: you're in a hotel in India, you're in a home,
22:05
Speaker 2: you could be lost in any part of the world.
22:07
Speaker 2: You could say this is New York or this is London,
22:10
Speaker 2: and then you could have somebody who's baying farms under
22:15
Speaker 2: a flyover which is worth one hundreds of millions of dollars,
22:18
Speaker 2: or there's a metro line, or there's coastal roads being built,
22:21
Speaker 2: and that that exists. And I'm not denying the fact
22:24
Speaker 2: that running away from that until we don't lift every
22:27
Speaker 2: single Indian to the last you know, demographic out of
22:32
Speaker 2: that base poverty line. We haven't done our job. So
22:35
Speaker 2: there's a real problem there and I think it's changed
22:38
Speaker 2: dramatically over the last fifteen years. But I think more
22:41
Speaker 2: needs to be done, and from a conscientious lens for
22:45
Speaker 2: a lot of Indian which are still in the in
22:48
Speaker 2: the in the mental framework of acquiring and expending and
22:53
Speaker 2: acquiring more for themselves, they need to do a lot
22:55
Speaker 2: more for others within the country. The other thing which
23:00
Speaker 2: which I think is that India's digital infrastructure grew far
23:05
Speaker 2: faster than our physical infrastructure. We've been ahead of the club.
23:09
Speaker 2: So that's why you hear hey the silicon value of
23:13
Speaker 2: the easters in Bangalore, all the data centers, back office operations,
23:20
Speaker 2: software engineers, some of the greatest CEOs across the world
23:24
Speaker 2: are of Indian origin because India spent a lot of
23:29
Speaker 2: invested a lot of money and higher end education on
23:31
Speaker 2: technology engineering, software developments, software coding, mathematics from primary school.
23:38
Speaker 2: Indians love math and you know English and math and
23:44
Speaker 2: basic skills, and there was a lot of investment that
23:46
Speaker 2: went into primary schooling and therefore seeing the benefit with
23:50
Speaker 2: the beneficiaries of that over decades, where today you've got
23:56
Speaker 2: a NASI equivalent space program out of India, you've got
23:58
Speaker 2: a defense program, You've got engineers, doctors all over the
24:02
Speaker 2: world that come out of India. However, the challenge has
24:08
Speaker 2: been that our physical infrastructure did not grow at the
24:12
Speaker 2: pace of our digital infrastructure. So if you came to
24:16
Speaker 2: India again, like I'm saying, pre pandemic, we've got unlike
24:23
Speaker 2: Southeast Asia, where if you look at Thailand, you can
24:27
Speaker 2: think of Bangkok as the city. I bet you if
24:31
Speaker 2: I ask you the next city in Thailand, you wouldn't
24:33
Speaker 2: be able to name the next largest city in Thailand.
24:36
Speaker 2: Same as with Malaysia. You can name Colam, tell me
24:39
Speaker 2: the next big city. Same is the case with other
24:42
Speaker 2: But just like just like China or Japan in that sense,
24:48
Speaker 2: or like the US of France, India has multiple cities
24:53
Speaker 2: that you can name where there's a population of about
24:55
Speaker 2: eight to ten million plus. This Bombay, this Banglord, There's Delhi,
24:59
Speaker 2: this chennai Aka, there's Kuna, there's Nakpur. And there are
25:03
Speaker 2: twenty five cities which have a population of five six
25:05
Speaker 2: million plus. And these are large, bustling populations where wealth
25:10
Speaker 2: gets created. There's factories, there's there's work, there's schooling, this
25:13
Speaker 2: collegere and therefore, I think what was required was that
25:18
Speaker 2: our physical infrastructure needed to be built. We've had extremely
25:23
Speaker 2: poor physical infrastructure and that stops you from building factories,
25:27
Speaker 2: people living in a place, working, traveling, creating wealth, and
25:32
Speaker 2: that has been our greatest shortcoming. But in the last
25:38
Speaker 2: again five or six years, there's a huge catch up
25:41
Speaker 2: that's taking place. As we speak today, Bombay has close
25:46
Speaker 2: to eleven metro lines that are being built. Three have
25:48
Speaker 2: been launched. Every six months a new metro line is
25:52
Speaker 2: being launched. It was like the Boston Big dig that
25:54
Speaker 2: took place in Bombay during the pandemic. The biggest coastal
25:59
Speaker 2: development in road an infrastructure project in India. I think
26:03
Speaker 2: they've spent about seven billion dollars on building this whole
26:06
Speaker 2: coastal road project in Mumbai, which was through reclamation that
26:11
Speaker 2: was done and if you google it, you'll see how
26:13
Speaker 2: large that development is. It's about nine kilometers of coastal
26:17
Speaker 2: road plus bridges on top of that, and about one
26:20
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty acres of coastal Bombay that was reclaimed
26:23
Speaker 2: and then built during the pandemic. That the same is
26:26
Speaker 2: happening in Delhi. The same is happening in Bangalore and Puna.
26:29
Speaker 2: There are about thirty Indian cities where metros, road projects, bridges,
26:35
Speaker 2: trains are being redone. We've had very archaic trains from
26:38
Speaker 2: the USS at time. We've had very old diesel trains
26:42
Speaker 2: and electric trains which nobody you and I would not
26:45
Speaker 2: even step into those trains. With this government, in the
26:49
Speaker 2: last five or seven years, we've had launches of multiple
26:52
Speaker 2: trains between Bombay and Ahabad, which is a city outside
26:55
Speaker 2: of It's a city in Gujarat. The first bullet train
26:59
Speaker 2: project is coming up, which is going live by the
27:01
Speaker 2: end of this year. At the moment, there are more
27:04
Speaker 2: than one hundred greenfield and brownfield airports that are being built.
27:07
Speaker 2: So Bombay till ten years ago had one airport where
27:11
Speaker 2: it ran out of capacity at thirty million passengers. They
27:16
Speaker 2: built a new terminal and an airport ten years ago
27:18
Speaker 2: with a fifty five million capacity that ran out. They've
27:22
Speaker 2: just launched the announced an airport in the pandemic and
27:25
Speaker 2: they've started a new airport with a ten million capacity
27:27
Speaker 2: which is expandable to about seventy million, and that is
27:31
Speaker 2: already operating. This is our third airport terminal. You will
27:35
Speaker 2: see that that in the last five or seven years,
27:38
Speaker 2: there's a big catch up. But I think we have
27:40
Speaker 2: another decade to go before this whole country in terms
27:45
Speaker 2: of road, rail, airport, transport, hubs, warehousing, data centers, all
27:53
Speaker 2: the physical stuff gets built out. So we have another
27:55
Speaker 2: ten years. So if we see the same sort of
27:58
Speaker 2: momentum between State Center and I have the same zeal
28:02
Speaker 2: over the next ten years, we should be a developed
28:05
Speaker 2: nation in the next ten years.
28:07
Speaker 1: So let's be more specific. How did book my show start?
28:13
Speaker 4: Oh, it's it's a story.
28:17
Speaker 2: It's uh, you were smoking and drinking. So this was
28:22
Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety nine, twenty seven years ago. I
28:28
Speaker 2: finished my you know I was. I was studying in
28:32
Speaker 2: Bombay and I finished my MBA and I was working
28:36
Speaker 2: for a company called HTA, which is Hindustan Thompson Associates,
28:40
Speaker 2: which is the Indian version of Jay Walter Thompson, the
28:43
Speaker 2: advertising agency. And I was working there after I finished
28:49
Speaker 2: my MBA. I was twenty two years old and this
28:55
Speaker 2: was I was two years into my job. I was
28:57
Speaker 2: having a great time. I was not only involved on
29:00
Speaker 2: the client servicing side, but I was deeply involved with
29:03
Speaker 2: my clients, creative in perths and finding solutions to real
29:07
Speaker 2: business problems. I was using my creativity. I got tested
29:12
Speaker 2: very late in life, but I made the ADHD dyslexic
29:15
Speaker 2: and dyscalculus. So I had a lot of shortcomings going
29:18
Speaker 2: through my education, and I didn't know why. I was
29:22
Speaker 2: sort of always a backbencher and was really hard for
29:26
Speaker 2: me to sort of catch up and understand a lot
29:28
Speaker 2: of things. But I would wing my way through energy
29:32
Speaker 2: sixth sense, knowing things before they would happen. And I
29:36
Speaker 2: had developed this sort of sixth sense because I had
29:40
Speaker 2: shortcomings in terms of dyslexia and add ADHD, and I would,
29:44
Speaker 2: you know, start thinking about other stuff and I would
29:47
Speaker 2: interchange numbers and words and a lot of that was
29:49
Speaker 2: going on. And therefore I went through my college life,
29:54
Speaker 2: which was hard. School was great fun because by that
29:57
Speaker 2: time you don't have the sort of pressures. And then
29:59
Speaker 2: I did my MBA, and then I was in advertising,
30:02
Speaker 2: which was supposed to be an analytical job and servicing
30:06
Speaker 2: a client, but I ended up using that sixth sense
30:09
Speaker 2: to a lot of the creative stuff that I would
30:12
Speaker 2: find solutions to my clients. And I was having a
30:14
Speaker 2: great time. The problem at that time. Of course things
30:17
Speaker 2: changed from two thousand and one two thousand and two,
30:21
Speaker 2: but at that time, if you've seen the series mad
30:24
Speaker 2: Men or Netflix, my company, the agency that I worked
30:28
Speaker 2: was was exactly like that. Everybody smoked and everybody drank coffee,
30:32
Speaker 2: which is fine, but the secondary smoke sort of was
30:35
Speaker 2: getting to me because I liked to be outdoors. I
30:38
Speaker 2: sailed boats. I love sailing on the weekend. I liked
30:41
Speaker 2: being outdoors in the sun, and this was sort of
30:44
Speaker 2: getting to me, the secondary smoke because everybody around me,
30:48
Speaker 2: the person in front, to the left, right behind me,
30:50
Speaker 2: was constantly smoking all the time. So I ended up
30:54
Speaker 2: taking a holiday with two of my closest mates who
30:58
Speaker 2: were in MBA with me, and one of them worked
30:59
Speaker 2: in South Africa, and I said, hey, listen, I'm coming
31:03
Speaker 2: on a holiday to see you for a couple of days.
31:06
Speaker 2: Let's do a backpacking trip. This was in ninety nine
31:09
Speaker 2: and I ended up extending my holiday and my boss said, look,
31:12
Speaker 2: if you don't come back in time, you might not
31:14
Speaker 2: have a job. So I pretty much lost my job
31:16
Speaker 2: on a text message, which was metaphorically and physically the
31:19
Speaker 2: most expensive sort of text message of my life because
31:24
Speaker 2: I moved. I wanted to go for this holiday to
31:28
Speaker 2: metaphorically clear my head and physically sort of be out there,
31:33
Speaker 2: and that's what triggered it. And we landed in joe Burg.
31:36
Speaker 2: I met Ric who's my co founder, and my brother
31:39
Speaker 2: from another mother and we're co founders at Book My Show,
31:44
Speaker 2: him Rajation me. We went from joe Burg down to
31:48
Speaker 2: Cape Town and we were going down the Garden route.
31:51
Speaker 2: We went down the Bay Route Nice now Plettenburg Bay
31:54
Speaker 2: all that and everybody knows us this Book My Show.
32:00
Speaker 2: But the registered name of the company even today, which
32:02
Speaker 2: is the official registered company, Book My Show is the
32:05
Speaker 2: brand name. The name of the company is Big Tree
32:07
Speaker 2: Entertainment Private Limited and the name Victory Entertainment Private Limited
32:11
Speaker 2: comes from storms Du Valley in South Africa where I
32:16
Speaker 2: was under a Big Tree. And I heard a radio
32:18
Speaker 2: commercial trying to sell Rugby tickets online on comput ticket.
32:23
Speaker 2: And this is the first time growing up in India
32:25
Speaker 2: where you had pigeonholes, where you had paper tickets, you
32:29
Speaker 2: would stand in line and you'd get sort of pushed
32:33
Speaker 2: and beaten up before you reach the box office to
32:35
Speaker 2: buy a cricket ticket in the morning after standing in
32:38
Speaker 2: the line all night in the rains, to be told
32:40
Speaker 2: that the tickets are sold out, and then all the
32:43
Speaker 2: touts would be selling the tickets. You're on the street.
32:47
Speaker 2: So that was the case with movies, with plays, with concerts,
32:50
Speaker 2: with cricket matches, with sporting events, and it was a
32:56
Speaker 2: really archaic way where there was no there was asymmetry
33:00
Speaker 2: in information, there was arbitrary arbitrage in ticket pricing. There
33:05
Speaker 2: was no information available, and all the tickets would be
33:08
Speaker 2: sold on the street and you would stand in line
33:12
Speaker 2: twenty four hours, get to the box office to be
33:14
Speaker 2: told that are not tickets. And here I was listening
33:16
Speaker 2: to the radio commercial in South Africa which was trying
33:20
Speaker 2: to sell Rugby tickets online and they said, hey, Li said,
33:23
Speaker 2: if you buy the tickets online, you get a ten
33:26
Speaker 2: percent coupon to buy merchandise, which you went buy. You
33:29
Speaker 2: jump the queue when you come. And I'm like, WHOA,
33:31
Speaker 2: what's happening out here? Like I'd never heard of anything
33:34
Speaker 2: like that. Anyways, I continued down. I heard the radio commercial.
33:38
Speaker 2: It was playing on my mind and we reached Cape
33:41
Speaker 2: Town and then we stayed in a place called stalin
33:45
Speaker 2: Bosh stalin Bosh is like the like the Nappa of
33:50
Speaker 2: South Africa is the wine growing region of South Africa.
33:54
Speaker 2: And when you go from vineyard to vineyard, they give
33:56
Speaker 2: you free tasting, small tasters of wine and you know,
33:59
Speaker 2: up to five glasses, small glasses. I come from a
34:03
Speaker 2: community where my parents grew up were Hindus, but we
34:08
Speaker 2: grew up on the Pakistan side. And during the partition,
34:11
Speaker 2: all the Hindus camea and the Muslims went there, and
34:14
Speaker 2: so we're Partition kids. And so we come from a
34:16
Speaker 2: community of scarcity. I mean a lot of the Indies
34:20
Speaker 2: are called the Jews of the East. So there's a
34:22
Speaker 2: there's there's a thing. And you know, I come from scarcity,
34:25
Speaker 2: and we're we're very entrepreneurial sort of community. We are
34:29
Speaker 2: landless people in our own country. The land that we
34:32
Speaker 2: grew up in is in another part of the world
34:35
Speaker 2: which we can't access. And so I don't know. It's
34:39
Speaker 2: my DNA. We were we were going through this wine
34:41
Speaker 2: country and everybody's sipping the wine and spitting it. I
34:44
Speaker 2: don't waste anything free. Anything given in life to me
34:48
Speaker 2: is valued. I wasn't wasting any of this. I ended
34:52
Speaker 2: up drinking twenty five glasses of wine from eleven am
34:55
Speaker 2: to three pm in the afternoon, and I woke up
34:58
Speaker 2: in the youth hostel a bunk bed that wasn't my
35:00
Speaker 2: the next morning, and by which time I had quit
35:02
Speaker 2: my job. I told my idea to both my co founders,
35:07
Speaker 2: and Rajah sort of moved on. Seven or eight years ago.
35:10
Speaker 2: He moved on from the company. Rick and I still
35:12
Speaker 2: run the company, and Victory was formed. I came back
35:16
Speaker 2: to Bombay, I didn't have a job, wrote about one pager.
35:20
Speaker 2: They had the TCPIP dial up. I wrote to Chase
35:23
Speaker 2: Capital Partners JP Morgan. My email wasn't going to them.
35:26
Speaker 2: I sent them a fax. It was faster than sending
35:28
Speaker 2: them an email, and they told me to come the
35:30
Speaker 2: next weekend and the rest, as they say, is history.
35:33
Speaker 2: They wrote a half a million dollars of check and
35:34
Speaker 2: that's how Victory was started. Those are the genesis of
35:37
Speaker 2: the early days of what is now.
35:40
Speaker 1: A little bit slower. Five hundred grand is five hundred grand.
35:45
Speaker 1: You weren't the only person looking for money. Was it
35:48
Speaker 1: that easy to get the money?
35:52
Speaker 2: It was a wild West, Bob. It was the wild
35:54
Speaker 2: wide West. I'm talking in ninety nine, nobody knew what
35:57
Speaker 2: a v see, what permanent capital, what you know, hedge fund,
36:05
Speaker 2: private equity. There was none of that bullshit right. There
36:07
Speaker 2: was no investment bankers and all that you know and
36:11
Speaker 2: all the trappings today and everybody's trying to make a
36:13
Speaker 2: quick bark, get a valuation, list a company. It didn't
36:16
Speaker 2: exist like it was the wild wild West at that time.
36:19
Speaker 2: I sent the facts. The two guys that were running
36:22
Speaker 2: Chase Capital Partners JP Morgan and India were a guy
36:25
Speaker 2: called birth Cavaldermanei and Ana Lahujah. I'm good friends with
36:28
Speaker 2: them even today. In fact, I raced with birth Cavlder
36:30
Speaker 2: money every Saturday. He's still a great friend of mine,
36:33
Speaker 2: still bitches me out for the investment that he make,
36:36
Speaker 2: and over a few beers he still asked me if
36:38
Speaker 2: he has any equity left, and I said, sorry, you
36:40
Speaker 2: sold me out to news cop in two thousand and one.
36:43
Speaker 2: So this was way back in nineteen ninety nine and
36:45
Speaker 2: twenty four years old. I sent him a facts and
36:49
Speaker 2: next weekend he said, come over half a million dollars check.
36:52
Speaker 2: And I didn't even know how much to ask. There
36:54
Speaker 2: was no business plan, and he wrote me a check
36:57
Speaker 2: it was as simple as that.
36:59
Speaker 1: Okay, so then what you do?
37:01
Speaker 2: You know a lot of people ask me what was
37:03
Speaker 2: what would be the one thing? And life is always
37:07
Speaker 2: looked better than the revue mirror on hindsight, I think,
37:13
Speaker 2: I don't think we have played or played the wrong game.
37:17
Speaker 2: We play a hard game and we play the game well.
37:20
Speaker 2: I just think that we needed to change the playground.
37:23
Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is from nineteen ninety
37:26
Speaker 2: nine to two thousand and nine, we would have not
37:30
Speaker 2: been who we are today had we not gone through
37:32
Speaker 2: that grind. But we pretty much wasted our time from
37:35
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine to two thousand and nine. And the
37:37
Speaker 2: reason I say that is because the ecosystem didn't exist
37:41
Speaker 2: in India. So we took a concept from the West,
37:45
Speaker 2: which is what Fandango, dre or Ticketmaster or access or
37:50
Speaker 2: you know, computict or whatever across the world systake in Singapore,
37:54
Speaker 2: and we tried to apply that in India. And I'll
37:58
Speaker 2: come to what I meant by that. The first ten
38:01
Speaker 2: years of my life, I was told from nineteen ninety
38:04
Speaker 2: nine to two thousand and nine that India will go
38:06
Speaker 2: the US way. The next ten years of my life
38:09
Speaker 2: I was told that from India will go the China way,
38:16
Speaker 2: and I've always held the fact that India will go
38:19
Speaker 2: the India way. Anybody that believes that India will go
38:22
Speaker 2: a certain way like the West or like the East,
38:26
Speaker 2: will find that this will be the biggest graveyard of companies, investors,
38:32
Speaker 2: businesses that have started because it's such a unique place
38:36
Speaker 2: and you will find it extremely rewarding if you're a
38:39
Speaker 2: patient and you do it in a manner where you
38:41
Speaker 2: understand the DNA of the place. And so even with us,
38:48
Speaker 2: we were trying to apply standards and things that we
38:53
Speaker 2: saw in the rest of the world to India, and
38:56
Speaker 2: none of them existed. The ecosystem. There was no internet
39:00
Speaker 2: connections or very poor internet connections. There was no mobile
39:04
Speaker 2: telephony and data connections. Still about ten years ago, India
39:08
Speaker 2: was languishing with the population of one point four billion.
39:11
Speaker 2: Today we were at about two hundred and fifty million
39:14
Speaker 2: data connections. Today we have over one point one one
39:17
Speaker 2: point two billion data connections with the cheapest mobile market
39:20
Speaker 2: in the world data connections, but we didn't have that
39:22
Speaker 2: at that time. With no payment systems. The credit card
39:26
Speaker 2: maxed out at twenty four million credit cards. With a
39:29
Speaker 2: population of one point four billion people, debit cards were
39:33
Speaker 2: only used as atm machines, and so with the non
39:38
Speaker 2: existence of any of these, we were trying to run
39:42
Speaker 2: a digital platform and trying to automate ticketing in a
39:45
Speaker 2: market that didn't exist at that time. The tax laws
39:48
Speaker 2: and the laws of the country didn't allow us to
39:50
Speaker 2: automate and digitize cinemas and venues. You had to have
39:54
Speaker 2: paper tickets and physical tickets. In fact, you had to
39:58
Speaker 2: have two hundred and fifty kets in a booklet with
40:01
Speaker 2: an audit doorkeeper in a patron counterfoil. The entertainment tax
40:05
Speaker 2: officer would come every week and stamp all three. You
40:08
Speaker 2: had to prepay the tax and when you issued a ticket,
40:12
Speaker 2: you had to issue the doorkeeper in the patron counterfoil
40:14
Speaker 2: and when you came to the door, they would tear
40:17
Speaker 2: the door counterfoil and keep it. The audit counterfoil had
40:20
Speaker 2: to be kept for six months at the venue and
40:23
Speaker 2: burnt a physical you had to burn it in eyesight
40:27
Speaker 2: of a e tax or an entertainment tax collector. And
40:32
Speaker 2: each state had a different law. And the entertainment tax
40:35
Speaker 2: in India at that time was as high as forty
40:37
Speaker 2: five percent. That was the law, and this was the
40:41
Speaker 2: environment that we were operating and jumped in without understanding
40:46
Speaker 2: that you can't automate the box office. There is no
40:48
Speaker 2: provision in the law for that. You cannot have tickets
40:51
Speaker 2: that are not stamped. How do you stamp a thermal
40:54
Speaker 2: rule If you have to open it and stamp each counterfoil,
40:57
Speaker 2: you can't do that. Tax was at forty five percent.
41:02
Speaker 2: There was no internet penetration. There was no mobile telephony.
41:05
Speaker 2: In fact, our call center where you had to call
41:08
Speaker 2: tickets for tickets, every city had its own telephone operator
41:16
Speaker 2: or company. And so what we had done was the
41:18
Speaker 2: last four digits out of seven digits were common. The
41:22
Speaker 2: first three digits were different to every city. So when
41:25
Speaker 2: I ran a marketing campaign for tickets, I couldn't say
41:27
Speaker 2: one eight hundred number and give like one eight hundred tickets.
41:31
Speaker 2: I had to give a separate marketing campaign for the
41:34
Speaker 2: seven cities that I was running in, and I had
41:36
Speaker 2: separate seven call centers in each of the cities. So
41:40
Speaker 2: the beauty about a technology business is where your cost
41:43
Speaker 2: curve flattens and a revenue curve keeps rising and the
41:46
Speaker 2: arbitrage and that is where value creation happens. In our case,
41:50
Speaker 2: our revenue curve was flat and our cost curve kept
41:54
Speaker 2: rising because on the weekends, I would have an opportunity loss.
41:58
Speaker 2: On the weekday, I had a natural law. I would
42:00
Speaker 2: take minimum guarantees, or I would buy tickets from movie
42:04
Speaker 2: theaters and plays and sporting arenas. And on the weekdays,
42:07
Speaker 2: nobody had we had no demand for tickets, and we
42:10
Speaker 2: would be left with dead inventory. And on the weekends,
42:13
Speaker 2: when I could sell a lot more, the guys weren't
42:16
Speaker 2: giving us tickets. But if we didn't answer the phones,
42:18
Speaker 2: we would lose the trust of our customers, who would
42:20
Speaker 2: not come back the next weekend. So we would have
42:23
Speaker 2: thousands of kids answering the call to say sorry, we
42:26
Speaker 2: don't have any tickets left, and we would hang up
42:27
Speaker 2: the phone. But I still had to put bodies behind
42:30
Speaker 2: those calls. And so every time I got more demand
42:35
Speaker 2: for tickets, the guys on bikes to deliver physical tickets
42:39
Speaker 2: and collect cash. We were the first cash on delivery
42:41
Speaker 2: company in the world in nineteen ninety nine, two thousand
42:43
Speaker 2: and one, two thousand and two. We could deliver about
42:47
Speaker 2: fifteen transactions every four hours, so It was a very cumbersome,
42:53
Speaker 2: operational heavy. We couldn't flatten the cost curve, you know,
42:59
Speaker 2: the and it kept rising. The revenue curve was flat.
43:03
Speaker 2: So it was the business was topsy turvy on its head.
43:07
Speaker 2: And when the dot com bus started in the US
43:09
Speaker 2: and it hit us about a year later, the carpet
43:12
Speaker 2: was pulled under our sheet, under our feet, like we
43:15
Speaker 2: had no funding, and we went down from one hundred
43:19
Speaker 2: and fifty employees down to five in two thousand and two,
43:22
Speaker 2: like we were wiped up. I didn't know where my
43:24
Speaker 2: next meal was coming from.
43:35
Speaker 1: Okay, then what'd you do?
43:37
Speaker 2: We said, look, we're not going to give this up.
43:39
Speaker 2: By which time, all our friends in MBA had bought cars,
43:42
Speaker 2: had bought homes, they were all working for multinational companies,
43:45
Speaker 2: and we said what do we do. Should we go
43:46
Speaker 2: back to a job and we said no, hell no,
43:49
Speaker 2: we started this, We're going to finish this off. And
43:53
Speaker 2: News Corp has sort of shut us down by this time,
43:57
Speaker 2: and so we went and negotiated terms of the News
43:59
Speaker 2: Corps and they said, you know you can do. We're
44:04
Speaker 2: happy to do a slum sale. I'd never heard of
44:06
Speaker 2: what a slum sale was. I was a slum sale,
44:09
Speaker 2: and they said, no, you've got to give us something
44:13
Speaker 2: and buy the assets. And I still remember we had
44:15
Speaker 2: bought a Cisco routed at that time for seventeen hundred
44:19
Speaker 2: dollars today that you don't even need a seventeen dollars
44:22
Speaker 2: device and seventeen hundred dollars Cisco router. So we bought
44:26
Speaker 2: back some hardware software, We negotiated terms, we borrowed money,
44:30
Speaker 2: and we bought the company back, and we promised our
44:34
Speaker 2: friends and family we pay them back in eighteen months.
44:36
Speaker 2: We paid them in ten years. We paid them back
44:38
Speaker 2: in eighteen months. And what we'd done was basically become
44:42
Speaker 2: a B to B two C company. So in two
44:45
Speaker 2: thousand and two we started running customer care centers, building websites,
44:52
Speaker 2: mobile frontends, working with mobile operators were on their phone,
44:59
Speaker 2: they had a bur they'd have a number of flowers
45:02
Speaker 2: and number of tickets and number for travel. We were
45:04
Speaker 2: powering that at the back end. And so what we
45:07
Speaker 2: had done was we were learning on the back of
45:11
Speaker 2: you know, venues and other operators and we would b
45:14
Speaker 2: to B to see company and we would get paid
45:18
Speaker 2: for the services that we were offering. But we were
45:20
Speaker 2: understanding what consumer demand was, what consumers wanted, and by
45:24
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine, we saw what was called Web
45:28
Speaker 2: two point zero, where people had adopted to the Web
45:33
Speaker 2: and they were buying things online now and were now
45:36
Speaker 2: more mobile savvy with more handsets and a real data connectivity.
45:41
Speaker 2: And that's when we launched the version of what you
45:45
Speaker 2: see today Book My Show in two thousand and seven,
45:50
Speaker 2: and that's where this brand was on. Before we were
45:52
Speaker 2: called Go for Ticketing, we were called Movie Tickets dot
45:56
Speaker 2: in but it was still the same company. And in
45:59
Speaker 2: two thousand seven we rebranded ourselves as bookmshow dot com.
46:04
Speaker 2: And again there's a funny story on how this name
46:06
Speaker 2: came about. We had a bunch of people in the company,
46:10
Speaker 2: we were about sixty people by now, and we ran
46:13
Speaker 2: a contest in the company. We said let's keep it
46:15
Speaker 2: democratic and open. You could submit up to three names
46:19
Speaker 2: and the URL should not have been taken. It should
46:22
Speaker 2: be available in dot com and dot in version, and
46:26
Speaker 2: if we liked the name, we carry a vote and
46:29
Speaker 2: the guy would get whoever won one, whichever name we
46:32
Speaker 2: chose would get an iPod touch. And there was an engineer,
46:38
Speaker 2: and there was an engineer who was an intern with us.
46:42
Speaker 2: His greatest contribution, I don't know where he is now.
46:44
Speaker 2: His greatest contribution was he gave three names. One of
46:47
Speaker 2: them was booked my Show dot com. It rung a bell,
46:50
Speaker 2: the url was available. Everybody loved it. He got an
46:53
Speaker 2: iPod touch. He quit the company in six months of joining.
46:55
Speaker 2: I don't know where he is, but that's his conticultion.
46:58
Speaker 1: Okay, you're starting again with book my Show in two
47:02
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. What is different this time from nineteen
47:07
Speaker 1: ninety nine? And at what point do you go to
47:09
Speaker 1: B two C? From B to B two C.
47:12
Speaker 2: So in two thousand and nine, when we launched the
47:16
Speaker 2: company the way it is today, where we had a
47:20
Speaker 2: web front end and we had a mobile site and
47:25
Speaker 2: a call center. By the way, this time the difference
47:30
Speaker 2: was that between two thousand and two and two thousand
47:32
Speaker 2: and nine, what we had done was developed the technology
47:37
Speaker 2: and the SaaS product, which we had installed in multiple
47:42
Speaker 2: movie theaters, concert venues and auditoriums, weather up plays. So
47:48
Speaker 2: they had a ticketing software where they were issuing tickets
47:52
Speaker 2: on a computer through a printer which could now be
47:56
Speaker 2: connected to a real time system. So we weren't now
48:00
Speaker 2: buying in mentory. We weren't blocking seats, we weren't playing
48:02
Speaker 2: a minimum guarantee. So that was the big difference. That
48:06
Speaker 2: we had gone and digitized and automated all the box
48:09
Speaker 2: offices of the country. We were India's box office and
48:12
Speaker 2: that was our technology and software that was powering that.
48:17
Speaker 2: And what we did was that when we started the
48:19
Speaker 2: front end, we said, you know what, that is still
48:22
Speaker 2: our core business. This is a great add on or
48:25
Speaker 2: a plus plus on top. Let's have some fun. Let's
48:28
Speaker 2: put this out there and let's see how many people
48:30
Speaker 2: end up buying tickets in the first month. So when
48:34
Speaker 2: we had started in Bob, going back to nineteen ninety
48:36
Speaker 2: nine to two thousand and two, ninety nine percent of
48:40
Speaker 2: our customers called on the call center and booked a ticket.
48:43
Speaker 2: By two thousand and nine, fifty percent of the people
48:46
Speaker 2: in the first month itself went online either through the
48:49
Speaker 2: mobile which was web mobile at that time, or went
48:53
Speaker 2: on their desktop and bought a ticket. And that was
48:55
Speaker 2: the change. It went from next to zero to fifty
48:59
Speaker 2: percent in two thousand and nine, and we knew that
49:02
Speaker 2: we were onto something we've always seen the market before.
49:06
Speaker 2: It's sort of mature and that has been the day
49:08
Speaker 2: end of the company. Even today, we see you five
49:10
Speaker 2: years down the line. We have this ability, this inabability
49:14
Speaker 2: to see. We see no wall. We don't see the
49:17
Speaker 2: height of the wall, the width of the wall, the
49:20
Speaker 2: material of the wall. How will you scale the wall?
49:23
Speaker 2: Would you be able to break it? We don't see that.
49:25
Speaker 2: We just see what's beyond that. And always thinking and
49:29
Speaker 2: seeing is what's beyond that, and therefore it doesn't exist
49:32
Speaker 2: for us, and it's always and that's been the culture
49:34
Speaker 2: in the day of the company. So even in two
49:36
Speaker 2: thousand and nine when we launched this, we were like,
49:39
Speaker 2: we're pretty sure this is going to work. And from
49:41
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine when the market sort of started
49:43
Speaker 2: scaling two thousand and seven, sorry, by twenty twelve. So
49:47
Speaker 2: Network eighteen, which is owned by Reliance, which is one
49:51
Speaker 2: of the world's largest conglomerates, which is into petrochemicals. They
49:55
Speaker 2: have a geo network which is mobile. They have retail
49:59
Speaker 2: which is which is owned by the Embini families. They're
50:02
Speaker 2: investors in our company because they bought our Network eighteen
50:05
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve. Sort of much later, but networkating investors
50:11
Speaker 2: in US in two thousand and seven, and then we
50:15
Speaker 2: had Accel Venture partners that came in twenty twelve. Elevation
50:19
Speaker 2: Capital invested in US twenty fourteen. Stripes Group from New
50:24
Speaker 2: Yorker Private Equity put money in twenty sixteen and twenty
50:27
Speaker 2: eighteen is when TPG led around, and so as the
50:31
Speaker 2: company sort of started scaling, we knew that we were
50:33
Speaker 2: onto something where we knew that there was a real
50:37
Speaker 2: market and a demand for movies and plays and concerts
50:41
Speaker 2: and sports in India, and that we had this ability
50:44
Speaker 2: to be able to fill this this structural hole that
50:47
Speaker 2: existed in the country, and we were able to do
50:51
Speaker 2: it cleanly, faster, better and give a convenience to consumers
50:55
Speaker 2: for which people were willing to pay for and be
50:57
Speaker 2: able to give information and you know, democratize the entire
51:02
Speaker 2: process of of of buying a ticket without you know,
51:07
Speaker 2: sort of being big about it.
51:09
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about fifty two thousand and nine or
51:13
Speaker 1: web purchases, you talk about twenty eighteen or so, when
51:18
Speaker 1: you get this incredible explosion of mobile telephony, everybody's ultimately
51:23
Speaker 1: an excess of one billion handsets, When does this flip?
51:27
Speaker 1: When do you start making money? You talk about investment,
51:31
Speaker 1: when do you start making money and what does the
51:34
Speaker 1: accelerant become.
51:35
Speaker 2: So we, unlike a lot of internet companies out of
51:41
Speaker 2: India or startups in India which are still losing money
51:46
Speaker 2: or invest or, are an investment mode. Book My Show
51:51
Speaker 2: was profitable even pre pandemic. We were a profitable company.
51:56
Speaker 2: We and we didn't talk about adjustedy but dumb margins
52:00
Speaker 2: adjusted profits. We were a profit making We had a
52:03
Speaker 2: really big, a real cross margin and we were humming
52:08
Speaker 2: along as a company that not just at ticketing, but
52:13
Speaker 2: because the infrastructure didn't exist in India for a lot
52:17
Speaker 2: of the large scale events and shows that happened. Book
52:21
Speaker 2: my Show was the money bags behind a lot of
52:24
Speaker 2: the promoters in India. So any promoter that came to
52:27
Speaker 2: us and would ask us for minimum guarantees or upfront cash,
52:33
Speaker 2: we were able to underwrite that risk purely because we
52:38
Speaker 2: could see the data. We had all the data for
52:40
Speaker 2: the last twenty years and right up until twenty eighteen,
52:46
Speaker 2: we were you know, we were upfronting money, we were
52:50
Speaker 2: underwriting risks, and we were you know, giving minimum guarantees.
52:56
Speaker 2: And what changed for us was, I'll tell you a
53:03
Speaker 2: little story, what changed for me was in two thousand
53:08
Speaker 2: and sixteen. There's a guy called Dan Marriott who rans
53:15
Speaker 2: who ran Stripes Group. He was a partner there and
53:18
Speaker 2: he worked with Barry Diller for a long time as
53:21
Speaker 2: his m and a head. And so Dan Marriott was Xise.
53:27
Speaker 2: He was involved with the whole purchase of Ticketmaster, and
53:31
Speaker 2: so he knew a bit about this business and he
53:33
Speaker 2: was pretty excited. And the good part about that, what
53:36
Speaker 2: was really cool about that was Stripes didn't have a
53:42
Speaker 2: any thesis on India. They didn't have a thesis, they
53:45
Speaker 2: didn't have any investment in India outside of US, and
53:48
Speaker 2: at that time, out of their fund, they put ten
53:50
Speaker 2: percent of their fund into into the company. So they
53:53
Speaker 2: were pretty committed. And Dan introduced me to this guy
53:56
Speaker 2: called David Coldberg who was ex Live Nation ticket Mark
54:00
Speaker 2: Stole and I met David in in New York. He
54:03
Speaker 2: lives in Vedesta, Marial and he's one of my closest
54:05
Speaker 2: friends and you know, I meet him every month. And
54:12
Speaker 2: so he said something which was which was quite hard hitting.
54:17
Speaker 2: We were upfronting money and underwriting risk, but a lot
54:22
Speaker 2: of the promoters in India and the reason why the
54:24
Speaker 2: live scene of the Live Emen's business was not growing
54:27
Speaker 2: in India was because A it was not data driven. B.
54:33
Speaker 2: All the promoters were undercutting the talent, agents and managers
54:37
Speaker 2: by underdeclaring ticket sales, not giving the right data, not
54:42
Speaker 2: paying taxes, fudging data to the government, fudging data to
54:48
Speaker 2: agents and managers to the talent and therefore it had
54:50
Speaker 2: become a hard guarantee market. And so any artist that
54:55
Speaker 2: came to India global artists and the Indian scene wasn't
54:59
Speaker 2: building up because all the Indian artists were like all
55:03
Speaker 2: the independents died. They just said, look this is too hard.
55:07
Speaker 2: We're never going to make money. It's a shitty experience.
55:10
Speaker 2: And everybody became background score artists for Bollywood and Tamil
55:16
Speaker 2: movies and telgu and Kunner movies. So all the talented
55:18
Speaker 2: songwriters musicians moved away to the film side of the
55:23
Speaker 2: business because most Indian cinema at that time, some of
55:27
Speaker 2: it still but most of it is almost like a
55:30
Speaker 2: Broadway movie show. There's songs in a movie, and they
55:34
Speaker 2: would be the guys who would be writing six to
55:36
Speaker 2: twelve songs for a movie and make a lot of
55:39
Speaker 2: money there. And so there was no independent musicians really
55:42
Speaker 2: left except a few rock acts and some musicians, and
55:46
Speaker 2: all the international musicians that came in they were far
55:48
Speaker 2: and fewd in between. You would have one. I remember
55:51
Speaker 2: in college we had one born Jovie. The biggest show
55:54
Speaker 2: in India was Europe and then Michael Jackson and Samantha Box.
55:57
Speaker 2: That's it. Maybe once every five years you would get one.
56:00
Speaker 2: And none of the international artists wanted to come to
56:02
Speaker 2: India because they found it a hardship market where everybody
56:08
Speaker 2: was getting a brand to endorse them, and then the
56:13
Speaker 2: promoters wanted to take a picture and get the world
56:15
Speaker 2: to meet them and show off that hey, they were
56:17
Speaker 2: hanging with an international artist, and they weren't looking at
56:19
Speaker 2: it as a business. And what they would do was
56:22
Speaker 2: undercut the fans as well. There was no health and
56:24
Speaker 2: safety standards, water would run out, their Mounteney turnstyles. They
56:30
Speaker 2: really didn't care as long as they could make a
56:32
Speaker 2: quick buck for themselves. And this was the market and
56:35
Speaker 2: book My show was taking the risk and underwriting the fees.
56:40
Speaker 2: We were selling the tickets. We were at the gates
56:43
Speaker 2: scanning people and making sure there was safety at the
56:47
Speaker 2: gates through the barricading and people entering. We were not
56:51
Speaker 2: in control of the health and safety. We were not
56:53
Speaker 2: in control of the artists. We were not in control
56:55
Speaker 2: of the production. So one out of one hundred shows
56:59
Speaker 2: would go okay, well, and you would remember the artists.
57:02
Speaker 2: Ninety nine of one hundred shows would be a shit show.
57:05
Speaker 2: And whenever anybody had to abuse the guy, they would
57:08
Speaker 2: abuse my show because we collected the money. Nobody knew
57:11
Speaker 2: who the promoter was. They only knew that there was
57:14
Speaker 2: an artist, and the artists can never be wrong because
57:16
Speaker 2: the artists did their job. But everything else was a
57:19
Speaker 2: shit show, and they would demand the money back from
57:21
Speaker 2: book my show, but even not the promoter. David Goldberg
57:24
Speaker 2: made me realize this. He said, Ash, do you know
57:26
Speaker 2: you're the promoter without being the promoter. He realized that,
57:29
Speaker 2: and I said, I didn't look at it that way.
57:31
Speaker 2: So he says, you're trying to be the good guy
57:35
Speaker 2: by not stepping on anybody's stores. But the point is
57:38
Speaker 2: that you're not growing the market, you're not going the industry,
57:41
Speaker 2: and you're anyways getting the brig backs or being the
57:45
Speaker 2: promoter without being the promoter. I said, yeah, I agree,
57:48
Speaker 2: and he said, look, let's do something about it. So
57:51
Speaker 2: we started meeting the folks we did. I remember a
57:56
Speaker 2: tour of Ed Shurant. His second tour in India was
57:59
Speaker 2: with US at a twelve thousand cap capacity. We did
58:03
Speaker 2: two runs of Self the Sole over thirty days in
58:06
Speaker 2: Bombay and Delhi, and I did one more show I
58:10
Speaker 2: can't recall. Just before that was edgeran Selt the Solet
58:16
Speaker 2: and we did one more event. For the life of me,
58:18
Speaker 2: I can't remember. And that's how we sort of started.
58:24
Speaker 2: And then I wasn't sure if this is something we
58:28
Speaker 2: wanted to do. By which time twenty eighteen, TPG invested
58:34
Speaker 2: in US and they were obviously investors in CAA at
58:36
Speaker 2: that time and a bunch of other assets. And the
58:39
Speaker 2: guy that invested in and this is a true Storybob,
58:44
Speaker 2: the guy that invested in US at that time was
58:47
Speaker 2: a guy called Bill McGlashan, maybe hed a Bill So.
58:50
Speaker 2: Bill was a partner at TPG, and he was also
58:55
Speaker 2: Bono's partner in the Rise Fund, which is an impact
58:59
Speaker 2: for profit fund. And Bill met me in in Bombay.
59:05
Speaker 2: He had come for a day or a weekend and
59:08
Speaker 2: he met a bunch of companies and he decided to
59:11
Speaker 2: invest in US. I think he met about ten companies
59:13
Speaker 2: and the only company he decided was us. A great guy.
59:16
Speaker 2: I'm still in touch with him, and Bill said, ash,
59:19
Speaker 2: I'm going to invest in book my show. I was great.
59:22
Speaker 2: And I remember on one of my trips to LA
59:25
Speaker 2: he said I wanted to meet Guy O Siri And
59:29
Speaker 2: I said, who's Guy? And he says, Guy is uh,
59:32
Speaker 2: you know runs Ah, you know artist Nation and he's
59:37
Speaker 2: he's the manager for YouTube and I said, wow, they
59:42
Speaker 2: are my heroes. You know, I'd love to meet Guy.
59:45
Speaker 2: And he says, guess what. Guys invited us over to
59:48
Speaker 2: his house and it's uh, it's Borno's birthday. I said,
59:53
Speaker 2: what are you talking like? This is this is crazy,
59:56
Speaker 2: Like I've and this guy first gume. Guy lived in
59:59
Speaker 2: a five meter radius. You know, I've traveled the world,
1:00:02
Speaker 2: but like you know, I keep coming back to my
1:00:04
Speaker 2: small little radius. And here I was like being invited
1:00:07
Speaker 2: to a birthday party being hosted by Bill and I
1:00:11
Speaker 2: ended up going for this birthday party, and you know,
1:00:14
Speaker 2: everybody was extremely warm, gracious. I remember Quincy Jones, Katy Perry, uh,
1:00:20
Speaker 2: you know the who's who of you know, Hollywood and
1:00:24
Speaker 2: Tom Hanks and everybody was you know, sort of in
1:00:26
Speaker 2: the house and got his birthday cake and he came
1:00:33
Speaker 2: and sat down with David David gold but Goldie, I
1:00:37
Speaker 2: call him gold Goldie and me and we ended up
1:00:40
Speaker 2: chatting on the couch for forty five minutes and I
1:00:44
Speaker 2: told him the story of book my show, and you know,
1:00:46
Speaker 2: I'll tell you a little more our humble beginnings, who
1:00:51
Speaker 2: we were as people, what we'd done, what we were achieving,
1:00:54
Speaker 2: what the market in India was, the charity and the
1:00:58
Speaker 2: the the work that we do for Africa of India,
1:01:00
Speaker 2: and not because it's mandated by everybody, it's just somebody,
1:01:04
Speaker 2: it's just our DNA. This is who we are. I'll
1:01:07
Speaker 2: tell you a bit about that. And I narrated the
1:01:10
Speaker 2: story to to Bono and he said, you know, Ash,
1:01:13
Speaker 2: I'll make you a promise. I said, what he says,
1:01:17
Speaker 2: I'm going to end the Joshua Tree tour with you
1:01:19
Speaker 2: and Mumbai. I actually didn't take him for facevalue. I
1:01:23
Speaker 2: thought maybe it's his birthday. He got taken in by
1:01:25
Speaker 2: the story. There won't be any follow up.
1:01:29
Speaker 4: I get a very five called from a guy called
1:01:32
Speaker 4: Arthur Foegel at Live Nation and.
1:01:35
Speaker 2: He's saying, why are we going to India and you know,
1:01:37
Speaker 2: he was pissed, and I'm like, who is this guy?
1:01:40
Speaker 4: And then I googled him and I said, holy shit,
1:01:42
Speaker 4: this is Arthur Bloody Fogel.
1:01:45
Speaker 2: And he called me and he screamed on the phone
1:01:48
Speaker 2: and he was like, why are even doing this? Who
1:01:50
Speaker 2: tells you to talk to an artist? And you know,
1:01:52
Speaker 2: I was just being introduced, and I said, look, we
1:01:54
Speaker 2: should do this. Arthur is my greatest champion ever ever
1:02:00
Speaker 2: since that day, like he was really pissed because he
1:02:04
Speaker 2: had to put this store together. And then he finally
1:02:05
Speaker 2: came to India and we did Joshua Tree in twenty
1:02:08
Speaker 2: nineteen December of twenty nineteen. That tour ended with Mumbai.
1:02:13
Speaker 2: You twok up their promise. They spent a week with us.
1:02:16
Speaker 2: It was the most incredible and surreal experience. I remember
1:02:20
Speaker 2: the fee that we had paid seemed like a lot
1:02:24
Speaker 2: and I was like, man, how am I going to
1:02:25
Speaker 2: make this up? Like we're going to lose money? And
1:02:28
Speaker 2: Arthur told me only one thing. He's saying, Ash, I'll
1:02:31
Speaker 2: tell you something. This will be the best investment you've
1:02:33
Speaker 2: made in your life. And that was the truth, because
1:02:36
Speaker 2: ever since that day he's been our greatest champion has
1:02:42
Speaker 2: helped us navigate. Every time I need some advice, I
1:02:45
Speaker 2: call him. And that started off what we are today
1:02:50
Speaker 2: in becoming one of the largest sort of.
1:02:52
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, a couple of questions. You're taking all
1:02:56
Speaker 1: this money, you're getting all this investment, what are they
1:03:00
Speaker 1: investing in at the time. Is being a concert promoter
1:03:06
Speaker 1: event promoter part of your pitch to get all this
1:03:10
Speaker 1: money or is this after you get the money?
1:03:13
Speaker 2: Good question, Bob. See the We started off as a
1:03:19
Speaker 2: as a ticketing company which used to ticket for movies
1:03:22
Speaker 2: in place, and eventually we moved into sport which was
1:03:27
Speaker 2: the beginning of IPL, which is the world's second most
1:03:31
Speaker 2: which is Sporting League. We got into concerts and what
1:03:36
Speaker 2: we realized is that if the ticketing side, which is
1:03:40
Speaker 2: the non movie side of the business, has to grow,
1:03:43
Speaker 2: there has to be growth in the live events business
1:03:47
Speaker 2: in the country. And that wasn't growing if somebody wasn't
1:03:52
Speaker 2: going to clean it up, scale it up, build trust
1:03:57
Speaker 2: in the market, go and put them the cells in
1:04:00
Speaker 2: front of agents and managers and artists and talk about
1:04:04
Speaker 2: what the market really is and not do it for
1:04:06
Speaker 2: personal Growley standing on the stage, going on Instagram and
1:04:10
Speaker 2: announcing the tour, but doing it for the right metrics
1:04:14
Speaker 2: and the right reasons. You also have to remember what
1:04:17
Speaker 2: changed dramatically with the Internet and the mobile telephony. Unlike
1:04:23
Speaker 2: the West, where you have a home where you may
1:04:25
Speaker 2: have four or five bedrooms, three bedrooms or four bedrooms,
1:04:29
Speaker 2: you may have a living room, a family room, a kitchen,
1:04:32
Speaker 2: you will have a TV in each one of those
1:04:34
Speaker 2: there'll be a screen, and anybody in your home, if
1:04:36
Speaker 2: there is three or four people could be in different
1:04:39
Speaker 2: parts and they could watch that. And they also have
1:04:41
Speaker 2: a mobile screen. They also have an iPad. A lot
1:04:44
Speaker 2: of Indians the only screen that they have is their
1:04:49
Speaker 2: smartphone on their mobile and that is their business. It
1:04:52
Speaker 2: is the communication device. It is the device with which
1:04:55
Speaker 2: they watch and have access to the rest of the world.
1:04:58
Speaker 2: And that's the thing that they would even watch a
1:05:01
Speaker 2: movie on, or a play or a concert. And therefore,
1:05:06
Speaker 2: unlike China, the YouTube of India was YouTube, the Spotify
1:05:10
Speaker 2: of India, Spotify, the Facebook of India, Spacebook the WhatsApp
1:05:15
Speaker 2: of India's WhatsApp. And therefore, in the last ten fifteen
1:05:20
Speaker 2: years that exposure to global experiences was on the palm
1:05:26
Speaker 2: of every India and therefore that was such a powerful
1:05:29
Speaker 2: tool where we were seeing the data of the demand
1:05:34
Speaker 2: that was coming through of tickets, that people were buying
1:05:37
Speaker 2: what they wanted. So our customers were demanding and saying
1:05:41
Speaker 2: why didn't you get this act and why didn't you
1:05:43
Speaker 2: get that? And we could see all that data on
1:05:45
Speaker 2: our platform because we were on Instagram, we were on Facebook,
1:05:49
Speaker 2: we were on social media, and we would see all
1:05:53
Speaker 2: this data and say that there is a real demand
1:05:56
Speaker 2: because they want the same experiences with their friends and
1:05:59
Speaker 2: family in India if it was done right. They don't
1:06:02
Speaker 2: want a version of that experience. They want the same experience.
1:06:05
Speaker 2: If you're seeing Fred again, or you're seeing you Too,
1:06:08
Speaker 2: or you're seeing Travis Scott, or you're seeing Green Day
1:06:11
Speaker 2: or Foo Fighters anywhere in the world, you want to
1:06:14
Speaker 2: see them in your own home, in your own backyard,
1:06:17
Speaker 2: with the same experience. And we were seeing this data,
1:06:20
Speaker 2: but nobody else was willing to scale it up and
1:06:23
Speaker 2: do it the right way, and none of it was
1:06:26
Speaker 2: being done and none of the artists were coming. So
1:06:29
Speaker 2: we went back to the board with a compelling argument
1:06:33
Speaker 2: to say that look, we have the data, we are
1:06:36
Speaker 2: a platform, We have the customers we need to build
1:06:40
Speaker 2: and we don't need to be a digital company. Look
1:06:42
Speaker 2: at us that we are being a customer first company.
1:06:45
Speaker 2: We're going to what our customers are demanding and saying
1:06:47
Speaker 2: and asking us, asking and demanding of it to be done.
1:06:51
Speaker 2: But there's nobody in the market who's willing to do it,
1:06:54
Speaker 2: and therefore either we partner up. By the way, we
1:06:57
Speaker 2: did buy and invest two companies. One is Sunburn, which
1:07:02
Speaker 2: is Asia's largest dance electronic music fourth largest dance electronic
1:07:09
Speaker 2: festival in the world. We do of our one and
1:07:11
Speaker 2: twenty events a year. We bought into that company. We
1:07:14
Speaker 2: bot one hundred percent of Sunburn, and we bought an
1:07:16
Speaker 2: Indian touring company called TribeVibe where we own a large
1:07:20
Speaker 2: chunk and a majority of that company. And these investments
1:07:23
Speaker 2: were made with the same sort of north star that
1:07:27
Speaker 2: we needed to you know, scale up, clean up, do
1:07:31
Speaker 2: the right things for health and safety, be fan first experience,
1:07:35
Speaker 2: and then make it a real touring market. So we
1:07:37
Speaker 2: went back to the compelling, you know argument, back to
1:07:42
Speaker 2: the board with I think Stripes got it because Dan
1:07:47
Speaker 2: and David came from that world. And then TPG, where
1:07:51
Speaker 2: David's also an advisor to TPG and they have investments
1:07:53
Speaker 2: in AA. It was an easy argument for us to
1:07:56
Speaker 2: make to say that we are we're also going to
1:07:58
Speaker 2: be doing a large of that and so you know
1:08:02
Speaker 2: what happens, Bob, is that unlike when you're twenty two
1:08:05
Speaker 2: or twenty four and you're young and you're brash. Look,
1:08:07
Speaker 2: i'm fifty to today, I've done this for twenty seven years.
1:08:09
Speaker 2: There's a little more faith and trust in the management,
1:08:15
Speaker 2: with the board, in the decisions that you're making, and
1:08:17
Speaker 2: you're not doing them because it's it's an idea that
1:08:21
Speaker 2: you woke up with that there's a compelling reason why
1:08:24
Speaker 2: we're doing what we're doing. As a part of that,
1:08:26
Speaker 2: we've also gotten into infrastructure which supports our live event's business.
1:08:29
Speaker 1: Okay, let's slow down a couple of things. Before you
1:08:36
Speaker 1: went into the live event business, what were your margins
1:08:38
Speaker 1: when you were selling tickets?
1:08:40
Speaker 2: Our margins over there are for the movie side of
1:08:45
Speaker 2: the way. Look, we're operating at typically a seven to
1:08:49
Speaker 2: eight percent margin on the gross.
1:08:51
Speaker 1: Okay, so you get a seven to eight percent margin
1:08:54
Speaker 1: in concert promotion. Live Nation tell you the margin is
1:08:58
Speaker 1: less than four percent. Okay, So you're going into a
1:09:05
Speaker 1: high risk business. Yes, when you were doing the back
1:09:09
Speaker 1: end for other promoters, you were not taking the risk
1:09:15
Speaker 1: assuming they weren't losing money. What made you think that
1:09:19
Speaker 1: this was going to be such a profitable business and
1:09:21
Speaker 1: what are your margins in live So.
1:09:24
Speaker 2: Bob, we were taking the risk because the risk was ours.
1:09:27
Speaker 2: When we were giving money to the promoters, what they
1:09:30
Speaker 2: would do was frontender deal Sana ban and artists without
1:09:34
Speaker 2: any data, commit to a price and then come to
1:09:37
Speaker 2: somebody like us or a platform, and then ask the
1:09:40
Speaker 2: money from us. And we were taking the risk, like
1:09:44
Speaker 2: I told you in the early part of the conversation,
1:09:46
Speaker 2: where we were giving them upfront guarantees or minimum guarantees.
1:09:49
Speaker 1: Okay, were you ever upside down on those deals? Did
1:09:53
Speaker 1: you ever front money? You did and you lost money?
1:09:56
Speaker 2: Yes?
1:09:57
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, next question, when you make those deals, you
1:10:03
Speaker 1: would only make money on the ticketing or since you
1:10:06
Speaker 1: were putting up all this money, was there a percentage
1:10:09
Speaker 1: there or other revenue stream.
1:10:12
Speaker 2: No, we were making money on ticketing. But then in
1:10:17
Speaker 2: a lot of places that these guys when they had
1:10:20
Speaker 2: to give us our money back, they would not be
1:10:23
Speaker 2: able to because we would not be able to hit
1:10:26
Speaker 2: the ticketing numbers that they were pushing us for. So
1:10:29
Speaker 2: if they take say one thousand dollars for a show,
1:10:32
Speaker 2: we would end up selling tickets worth eight hundred and
1:10:34
Speaker 2: nine hundred and we would lose money on the whole deal.
1:10:45
Speaker 1: Okay, So someone would say, you're reinventing the wheel, which
1:10:51
Speaker 1: has already been invented. Why don't they just take a
1:10:55
Speaker 1: the ticketmaster just put their footprint down. Why were you
1:10:59
Speaker 1: saying saying no, I'm going to invent ticketing from scratch.
1:11:04
Speaker 2: Look again, a lot of these companies which you're mentioning
1:11:09
Speaker 2: have tried the hand and come to India. It's not
1:11:11
Speaker 2: like they have it while we were there. We just
1:11:15
Speaker 2: know the dna of the market the most, the challenges
1:11:23
Speaker 2: better than anybody else. We're so entrenched. India is not
1:11:26
Speaker 2: for the faint hearted. It is a very complex market,
1:11:30
Speaker 2: not only in terms of language, people understanding regional content,
1:11:38
Speaker 2: things that work, things that don't work, The way people operate,
1:11:43
Speaker 2: the way transactions and businesses are done in this country.
1:11:48
Speaker 2: It's hard. It's like, you know, it's as naive is saying, listen,
1:11:51
Speaker 2: I'll walk into China and start a business tomorrow, or
1:11:55
Speaker 2: this is even harder. It's easier in terms of language
1:11:58
Speaker 2: and the platforms that exist. But once that's the easy part,
1:12:02
Speaker 2: once you come here, you'll realize how how hard it is.
1:12:05
Speaker 2: And I don't think there's any company in the western
1:12:08
Speaker 2: or the Far East world that hasn't tried the hand
1:12:12
Speaker 2: or tried and attempted to build a business here. What
1:12:16
Speaker 2: I think we were doing right. I don't think a
1:12:18
Speaker 2: lot of them had any interest in the movie side
1:12:20
Speaker 2: of the business. And we always knew that the movies
1:12:23
Speaker 2: are the cheapest form of entertainment at scale that Indians consume.
1:12:31
Speaker 2: India is a hot and a humid country. For about
1:12:36
Speaker 2: six months of the year, it's either hot at it's humid.
1:12:39
Speaker 2: You don't do alfresco dining, you don't go for outdoor shows,
1:12:42
Speaker 2: you don't go for outdoor events. The whole market stops
1:12:45
Speaker 2: for five to six months of the year in various
1:12:48
Speaker 2: parts of the country. It's a very harsh climate. But
1:12:52
Speaker 2: movies is the cheapest form of indoor entertainment, which is
1:12:58
Speaker 2: still very underpenetrated in the country. Read India produces close
1:13:02
Speaker 2: to fifteen hundred movies a year in all languages put together,
1:13:06
Speaker 2: and Indians like going to the movies, which is indoor
1:13:10
Speaker 2: air conditioned, air cooled mund For years, movie theaters sold
1:13:16
Speaker 2: the USB as air cooled and then finally air conditioned.
1:13:20
Speaker 2: They sold convenience more than the content. And so for
1:13:24
Speaker 2: a lot of Indians, going to the movies was their
1:13:28
Speaker 2: Super Bowl or the NBA or the NFL and every
1:13:33
Speaker 2: Friday you would go. And movies were and still continue
1:13:37
Speaker 2: to be in large regional pockets of the country the
1:13:40
Speaker 2: biggest thing that you can do. And we believed in
1:13:43
Speaker 2: that that there was a market for movie ticketing with
1:13:47
Speaker 2: allocated seating, with convenience that can be offered for pre
1:13:52
Speaker 2: purchase of popcorn and drinks and things like that. Nobody
1:13:55
Speaker 2: believed in that. A lot of the global players came
1:13:57
Speaker 2: in and said, movies, we don't care. We're going to
1:14:01
Speaker 2: build a business outside. But what movies did for us
1:14:04
Speaker 2: was created a community for us, which was tens and
1:14:08
Speaker 2: tens of millions of users whose understanding and preferences in
1:14:13
Speaker 2: data we understood. And they were the same consumers which
1:14:16
Speaker 2: were willing to consume content for sport and live events
1:14:21
Speaker 2: and plays and everything else. But they started off with
1:14:24
Speaker 2: us with movies because all they did not have access
1:14:27
Speaker 2: to other forms of entertainment, but no other ticketing platform
1:14:30
Speaker 2: wanted to do that. They don't want to do the
1:14:32
Speaker 2: hard work. They said, Hey, we're going to do some
1:14:34
Speaker 2: cricket tickets. Okay, we'll sell a concert here and there,
1:14:36
Speaker 2: and that's it. And all of them came and failed
1:14:39
Speaker 2: at doing that, and that was the reality of the market. Also,
1:14:42
Speaker 2: they brought in costs which were Western costs to earn
1:14:48
Speaker 2: Indian revenue. We were a company that operated with Indian
1:14:52
Speaker 2: costs generating Indian revenue.
1:14:55
Speaker 1: Okay, different question. Prior to doing anything with live events,
1:15:01
Speaker 1: your ticketing movies, did you have any competitors?
1:15:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I launched in when we launched in ninety
1:15:10
Speaker 2: ninety nine. Between ninety ninety nine and two thousand and two,
1:15:13
Speaker 2: we had about nineteen competitors. When the dot com bust happened,
1:15:17
Speaker 2: eighteen of them died and we were the only guys
1:15:19
Speaker 2: that continued. By two thousand and six, two thousand and seven,
1:15:23
Speaker 2: we again had about ten or twelve competitors. By the
1:15:26
Speaker 2: time when the global financial crisis happened again, a bunch
1:15:30
Speaker 2: of them died. Pre pandemic, we had a bunch of
1:15:35
Speaker 2: competitors one by one, they all shut down, and then
1:15:39
Speaker 2: there was some regional guys that there was some consolidation,
1:15:42
Speaker 2: et cetera. And then we continue to have competition that
1:15:46
Speaker 2: keeps coming in.
1:15:47
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so let's just talk about movie ticketing. Digital
1:15:51
Speaker 1: movie ticketing, not proof well, not purchased at the box office.
1:15:57
Speaker 1: What percentage of the market do you have?
1:16:01
Speaker 2: We are we're a dominant ship of that dominant as.
1:16:05
Speaker 1: It in excess of fifty percent.
1:16:08
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, much sure.
1:16:10
Speaker 1: Okay, when you were bank rolling concert promoters, how many
1:16:16
Speaker 1: other people were doing the same thing, bankrolling being the
1:16:20
Speaker 1: financial and ticketing end for these.
1:16:23
Speaker 2: Promoters, that would be maybe four or five.
1:16:29
Speaker 1: What happened with the rest of them?
1:16:32
Speaker 2: They just didn't have the scale of the data that
1:16:36
Speaker 2: we had for us to take more informed and better
1:16:39
Speaker 2: decisions than data.
1:16:41
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, in today's world, you're talking about dealing
1:16:44
Speaker 1: with Arts of Fogel, who does the touring deals overseers
1:16:48
Speaker 1: the big deals for live nation worldwide. There's an equivalent
1:16:54
Speaker 1: company and People at Age. Those are the two powerhouses internationally.
1:17:00
Speaker 1: Do you just purchase from these two companies or you
1:17:04
Speaker 1: were aligned or they have an investment in you? What
1:17:07
Speaker 1: did your relationship with those two companies.
1:17:11
Speaker 2: We have an amazing relationship with both of them. And
1:17:15
Speaker 2: this business is such a personable and personality different business
1:17:19
Speaker 2: where touring maners, agents, managers trust the guy they would
1:17:24
Speaker 2: trust a Bob, they trust an Ashih, they trust the
1:17:27
Speaker 2: guy who's in front of them to deliver what we
1:17:30
Speaker 2: do because there's so many twist sentturns. We have great
1:17:34
Speaker 2: relationships with with AG. I worked with a guy called
1:17:38
Speaker 2: Adam Wilks for years and years who's the head of Asia.
1:17:42
Speaker 2: He's now moved to London. He's been a great, you
1:17:45
Speaker 2: know supporter of our steed fickery at ag As has
1:17:49
Speaker 2: been a great supporter. We we do a lot of stores,
1:17:51
Speaker 2: so ed Shurance stores done done with AG. The NBA
1:17:56
Speaker 2: exhibition games in India were done done with AG. So
1:17:59
Speaker 2: we work with AG. We did a crazy tour with
1:18:03
Speaker 2: Edge where he had come in March of twenty four
1:18:11
Speaker 2: and we did a show in the round with fifty
1:18:14
Speaker 2: five thousand people. And then he said, and this was
1:18:17
Speaker 2: personally when I met him, he said, look, I'm going
1:18:19
Speaker 2: to go deep in the country. And I recalled. We
1:18:21
Speaker 2: were at a party having a drink and he said,
1:18:24
Speaker 2: why can't I do more? Shows, and then we ended
1:18:26
Speaker 2: up doing nine shows across Bhutan and it's seven cities
1:18:31
Speaker 2: in India with two in Bangalore back to back. So
1:18:35
Speaker 2: he went really deepeated Puna, Chennai, Bangalo or Hyderabad, Bombay.
1:18:40
Speaker 2: So we did shows. So we worked with ag with
1:18:42
Speaker 2: Live Nation, we've done a lot of work. We were
1:18:45
Speaker 2: integrated into so much volume that Live Nation brings to
1:18:50
Speaker 2: the Middle East and Southeast Asia that we worked with them.
1:18:53
Speaker 2: But hey, we worked with agents and managers directly. We
1:18:56
Speaker 2: worked with Okay.
1:18:57
Speaker 1: But just stopping for a second, do either AEG, Live
1:19:03
Speaker 1: Nation or any other concert company have a financial investment
1:19:09
Speaker 1: in Book My Show.
1:19:10
Speaker 3: No, they don't, Okay, In terms of concert promotion, this
1:19:16
Speaker 3: is a little difficult because what do we define as concerts?
1:19:20
Speaker 3: But to what degree of the market of five thousand
1:19:25
Speaker 3: plus seats does Book.
1:19:27
Speaker 1: My Show have.
1:19:28
Speaker 2: Let me answer it in a different manner and maybe
1:19:31
Speaker 2: it may make sense and we can go deeper. Book
1:19:36
Speaker 2: my Show lists about thirty five thousand to forty thousand
1:19:40
Speaker 2: shows a year on our platform, which is non movies,
1:19:44
Speaker 2: which is stand up concerts, you know, all sorts of
1:19:51
Speaker 2: life which is outside of outside of movies, and these
1:19:57
Speaker 2: could be really small rooms to lag room. As far
1:20:01
Speaker 2: as we are concern last fiscal book, my show did
1:20:04
Speaker 2: close to three hundred and fifty concert or live show
1:20:11
Speaker 2: nights which we produced and promoted, which includes stand up,
1:20:16
Speaker 2: it includes music largely our live touring, which is the
1:20:25
Speaker 2: Indian live touring, which is our Indian artists. We did
1:20:29
Speaker 2: close to two hundred shows which were produced and promoted
1:20:34
Speaker 2: by us on the Indian side, on the regional and
1:20:37
Speaker 2: Hindi and the local acts. We did about one hundred
1:20:41
Speaker 2: electronic dance music acts, which is our Sunburn side of
1:20:44
Speaker 2: the business. And we did about fifty nights which we
1:20:48
Speaker 2: did out of the global touring side of the business,
1:20:51
Speaker 2: which is whether it's Green Day or it's Lincoln Park
1:20:56
Speaker 2: or its Guns n' Roses, Maroon five Edsurance, we did
1:21:01
Speaker 2: about fifty's. That's been the scale that we've been able
1:21:05
Speaker 2: to do despite the fact that we have a six
1:21:07
Speaker 2: month touring market. We become so for six months of
1:21:10
Speaker 2: the year.
1:21:11
Speaker 1: You have a country that has an excess of a
1:21:13
Speaker 1: billion resonans, you obviously are doing a lot of shows.
1:21:18
Speaker 1: Your closest competitor, what percentage of the shows that you
1:21:22
Speaker 1: do do they do?
1:21:24
Speaker 2: My sense would be that they would be at maybe
1:21:27
Speaker 2: twenty percent of what we do.
1:21:29
Speaker 1: Okay, at this late date, net what percentage of your
1:21:34
Speaker 1: profits come from live as opposed to movies?
1:21:39
Speaker 2: So the concert more than the profits. I would talk
1:21:43
Speaker 2: about the revenues today, we're inching towards about forty to
1:21:49
Speaker 2: fifty percent of our revenues are now coming from life,
1:21:52
Speaker 2: which was zerotal pre pandemic because we weren't in this business.
1:21:56
Speaker 1: Okay, of your live business, yes, on an event by
1:22:02
Speaker 1: event basis, how many are in the red or losing money?
1:22:08
Speaker 2: So I would say about sixty five percent of our
1:22:14
Speaker 2: international live business makes money. On the Indian touring side,
1:22:22
Speaker 2: I would say about seventy five percent of Indian touring
1:22:25
Speaker 2: makes money. And so is the case about eighty percent
1:22:28
Speaker 2: of our electronic events make money.
1:22:31
Speaker 1: Okay, of the thirty five percent of the international acts
1:22:34
Speaker 1: it don't make money. Why do they not make money?
1:22:38
Speaker 1: Is it demand? Is it other financial things?
1:22:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll tell you that the problem is that there's
1:22:48
Speaker 2: two or three structural issues that we have. Number One,
1:22:52
Speaker 2: Bob that, like I said, India doesn't have the physical
1:22:56
Speaker 2: infrastructure yet and therefore most of our ros are out
1:23:02
Speaker 2: in the open where either not in a stadium, but
1:23:07
Speaker 2: in an open field where we have to create the
1:23:10
Speaker 2: entire It's almost like I'm a construction company. I have
1:23:13
Speaker 2: to create the city. I create the periphery Browlberry wall.
1:23:16
Speaker 2: I put up my black steel stage. I do mojo barricading,
1:23:20
Speaker 2: my turnstiles. I create my back office area. And it's
1:23:24
Speaker 2: not a plug and play like an arena, or it's
1:23:27
Speaker 2: not like a Wembley or an O two or a
1:23:29
Speaker 2: co Op Live or any of these arenas or venues
1:23:32
Speaker 2: in the world. I have to construct everything and then
1:23:34
Speaker 2: tear it down. And therefore what tends to happen is
1:23:38
Speaker 2: that my first of all, my revenues today from ticketing
1:23:45
Speaker 2: would be soft by about thirty percent of global primary
1:23:50
Speaker 2: ticket prices. But I have an eighteen percent GSD, which
1:23:55
Speaker 2: used to be forty five percent in etax. Today's eighteen percent.
1:23:59
Speaker 2: It's far lower than it used to be, but it's
1:24:01
Speaker 2: still very high when it comes to anywhere else in
1:24:03
Speaker 2: the world. So if I'm selling a ticket for ten bucks,
1:24:07
Speaker 2: you know one point eight goes straight away as GSD.
1:24:11
Speaker 2: Now anybody else in the world would think, Okay, You've
1:24:15
Speaker 2: got these ticket prices which are slightly soft, maybe thirty
1:24:17
Speaker 2: percent soft primary ticket prices, and even in the world,
1:24:20
Speaker 2: I've got an eighteen percent hit on top of that.
1:24:23
Speaker 2: But then my cost to put up a show is
1:24:27
Speaker 2: higher than what it would cost to put up a
1:24:29
Speaker 2: show in the western world. Because it's plug and play.
1:24:32
Speaker 2: You can go in into two days and set up
1:24:34
Speaker 2: a show and break down and tear down in less
1:24:38
Speaker 2: than one day and walk out. And therefore to move
1:24:41
Speaker 2: your gear and equipment, which exists in every market in
1:24:44
Speaker 2: every small town in India doesn't exist. So I've got
1:24:47
Speaker 2: to move it from city to city. And a large
1:24:50
Speaker 2: case is that I have to air freate it because
1:24:52
Speaker 2: if I'm jumping a show, when artists come and they
1:24:54
Speaker 2: say I'm going to do three cities in a week,
1:24:57
Speaker 2: I can't move my gear on the road. It's because
1:25:00
Speaker 2: my road infrastructure still hasn't reached the level where it
1:25:04
Speaker 2: is in the rest of the world, where fifteen hundred
1:25:07
Speaker 2: kilometers means I can get there in six hours or
1:25:10
Speaker 2: eight hours. Anywhere else in the world, it would take
1:25:12
Speaker 2: me two days to move my gear, by which time
1:25:15
Speaker 2: I can't set up in my next city, and therefore
1:25:17
Speaker 2: I need to spend that much more on gear and infrastructure.
1:25:21
Speaker 2: So my cost on setting up a show and producing
1:25:24
Speaker 2: and developing a show is far greater than another parts
1:25:29
Speaker 2: of the world. So again in the early days of
1:25:31
Speaker 2: book my show, some of this is upside down where
1:25:35
Speaker 2: my revenue should be far higher and my cost should
1:25:38
Speaker 2: be lower. But I am inkering costs on in front
1:25:42
Speaker 2: training people, getting the right talent, which doesn't exist in
1:25:46
Speaker 2: terms of the pool. And so those are the things
1:25:48
Speaker 2: that we're still addressing. I don't think it's that much
1:25:51
Speaker 2: of a demand issue as much of us being able
1:25:55
Speaker 2: to keep our costs under check and the necessary infrastructure
1:25:59
Speaker 2: that you need to be able to plug and play
1:26:01
Speaker 2: a show and have shared infrastructure over a period of time.
1:26:04
Speaker 2: So those are the kind of things that we're dealing
1:26:07
Speaker 2: with at the moment.
1:26:08
Speaker 1: Okay, will you do shows in excess of five thousand capacity,
1:26:13
Speaker 1: what percentage of those are you building infrastructure from scratch?
1:26:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when we do so. First of all, India
1:26:27
Speaker 2: doesn't have arenas, music arenas or sporting arenas, unlike the US,
1:26:33
Speaker 2: where the anchor is either an ice hockey team or
1:26:37
Speaker 2: a basketball team, which takes away hundreds of days. You've
1:26:40
Speaker 2: got arenas which have an anchor and therefore there's music
1:26:44
Speaker 2: that can be done. In Europe, it was very egalitarian
1:26:47
Speaker 2: and therefore the state or the city council built all
1:26:51
Speaker 2: of these venues and today there are the likes of
1:26:53
Speaker 2: OVG and Live Nation and AG who are building these arenas.
1:26:57
Speaker 2: We don't have any of these venues in India. Even
1:27:00
Speaker 2: in terms of stateium infrastructure. The only stadiums at scale
1:27:03
Speaker 2: that we have in places are cricket stadiums, and cricket,
1:27:07
Speaker 2: as you know, has a pitch where the center ground
1:27:10
Speaker 2: can't be disturbed because it's got a pitch where if
1:27:14
Speaker 2: you sort of put anything on it or do driveables,
1:27:18
Speaker 2: you're going to damage the turf and then a game
1:27:20
Speaker 2: can't be played. And they're controlled by state associations, which
1:27:24
Speaker 2: is not one body, and it's very hard to deal
1:27:26
Speaker 2: with each of the state associations. When we did Coldplay
1:27:29
Speaker 2: for the first time the history of India on a
1:27:32
Speaker 2: live cricket stadium, which is the world's largest stadium. It
1:27:35
Speaker 2: has one hundred and thirty two thousand capacity, we did
1:27:38
Speaker 2: cold Play and we did two shows in and the
1:27:41
Speaker 2: Bad and three in Mumbai, and we hit a world
1:27:43
Speaker 2: record for the twenty first century of the largest stadium
1:27:46
Speaker 2: ticketed concert ever where we did one hundred and fourteen
1:27:49
Speaker 2: thousand tickets per day into two at the Ahabad Stadium
1:27:53
Speaker 2: where we actually covered the whole ground. We put driveables
1:27:56
Speaker 2: and that was the first time the history of India
1:27:58
Speaker 2: we were able to prove that we can get a
1:28:00
Speaker 2: pitch back in order, where fourteen days later there was
1:28:02
Speaker 2: an India England game that was paid played on the
1:28:05
Speaker 2: same ground, which is the Narendromodi Stadium in Amberba. So
1:28:08
Speaker 2: we're getting there, but it's been really slow. Six months
1:28:10
Speaker 2: of the year, you can't do any any events. We
1:28:14
Speaker 2: don't have closed door arenas and therefore we have very
1:28:17
Speaker 2: few venues in the country, maybe only in Bombay and
1:28:21
Speaker 2: Delhi where you have a capacity of six thousand and
1:28:27
Speaker 2: a venue which is a closed dome with their conditioning.
1:28:30
Speaker 2: Everything else has to be done outside, okay, outdoors, and
1:28:34
Speaker 2: when it's done outdoors, you need to set it up
1:28:37
Speaker 2: and the whole infrastructure needs to be done. And every
1:28:40
Speaker 2: time we do a show which is over five thousand
1:28:43
Speaker 2: book my show has to build that from scratch, okay.
1:28:47
Speaker 1: But when it comes to concert promotion, since it's such
1:28:52
Speaker 1: a low margin business, there are other rex journals which
1:28:57
Speaker 1: go straight to the bottom line, such that if you
1:28:59
Speaker 1: have a festival and you're doing good attendance, they're more
1:29:03
Speaker 1: profitable than a traditional show. So since everything is done outside,
1:29:09
Speaker 1: what are the issues with making money from sponsorship, from food,
1:29:14
Speaker 1: from merch Are those all reasonable revenue streams for you?
1:29:19
Speaker 2: Great question? So coming to festivals, I mean again, I
1:29:22
Speaker 2: have a great addict God. In a story, Charlie Walker
1:29:27
Speaker 2: C three came and hung out with me for a
1:29:30
Speaker 2: week in twenty nineteen when we did when we did
1:29:35
Speaker 2: the YouTube concert, and he came to see what we
1:29:41
Speaker 2: were all about, and he wanted to see the market,
1:29:43
Speaker 2: and he took a risk on us. He took a
1:29:46
Speaker 2: punt and he said, you know, I really like you guys,
1:29:49
Speaker 2: and I think Lalla Pluza would do well in India.
1:29:55
Speaker 2: And we spoke about it, we negotiated terms, and the
1:29:58
Speaker 2: pandemic habit. Literally we were left for the dead because
1:30:02
Speaker 2: I was a seventeen hundred strong sort of people organization
1:30:07
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty and when the pandemic happened, by the
1:30:10
Speaker 2: end of it, we were down to about five hundred
1:30:13
Speaker 2: and fifty people. So I had to let go of
1:30:14
Speaker 2: eleven hundred plus people like we were we were dead,
1:30:19
Speaker 2: and Charlie was here and he said, look, Ash, I
1:30:22
Speaker 2: really want to do this, but we had to put
1:30:24
Speaker 2: a pin in it and we couldn't do anything until
1:30:26
Speaker 2: the pandemic got over. Twenty twenty seven will be our
1:30:31
Speaker 2: fifth year of Lalla Plutes in India. Between Europe and
1:30:37
Speaker 2: the US, there is no Lalla plutesa that takes place
1:30:40
Speaker 2: in all of Asia, Middle East, anywhere in Japan, Southeast Asia.
1:30:46
Speaker 2: And Charlie said, we will, we will build this with
1:30:49
Speaker 2: you guys, and he kept his promise. And you know,
1:30:51
Speaker 2: we grew this festival. Our teams worked really well together
1:30:55
Speaker 2: and it started with the first year and this was
1:30:59
Speaker 2: our fourth year. We've had the likes of you know,
1:31:03
Speaker 2: Green Day and Lincoln Park and Imagine Dragons and you know,
1:31:09
Speaker 2: really cool bands that have come and and half the
1:31:11
Speaker 2: bands that are our global brands and the other half
1:31:13
Speaker 2: are our Indian Indian artists that at play and you know,
1:31:17
Speaker 2: there's magic that happens and you should come sometimes it's
1:31:20
Speaker 2: it's just fascinating what we've seen. And at a festival,
1:31:24
Speaker 2: brands play a very critical part in stage branding installations,
1:31:30
Speaker 2: beverage partnership, food, merchandise, drinks. You can go crazy with
1:31:35
Speaker 2: brands because there's so much of experiential marketing and brand
1:31:39
Speaker 2: spends that takes place in these festivals because they're touch
1:31:43
Speaker 2: and feel and people spend the whole day. So we've
1:31:45
Speaker 2: got a bunch of festivals. Lallapludes, of course, is our flagship.
1:31:49
Speaker 2: It's in the fifty are now in twenty twenty seven.
1:31:54
Speaker 2: We've got a festival in Bangalore which is like the
1:31:56
Speaker 2: rock capital of India. It's called band Land. We've got
1:31:59
Speaker 2: four five This is a part of band Land right now.
1:32:02
Speaker 2: We have another festival which is Asia's largest electronic dance
1:32:05
Speaker 2: music festival, which is called Sunburn, which happens every December.
1:32:10
Speaker 2: It's in its eighteenth year running. It wasn't go after
1:32:14
Speaker 2: the last fifteen years and now we've moved it to
1:32:16
Speaker 2: Mumbai and now it's it's found its new home in Mumbai.
1:32:19
Speaker 2: And we have a bunch of other brand led festivals
1:32:24
Speaker 2: like Nika Land we do which is which is Nikahs
1:32:28
Speaker 2: is a beauty business which we built a beauty ip
1:32:32
Speaker 2: around that. So there's a lot of brand integration and
1:32:36
Speaker 2: brand money that comes in and runs into tens of
1:32:40
Speaker 2: millions of dollars in terms of brand money, merchandise, food
1:32:43
Speaker 2: and beverage. Now, when it comes to the touring side
1:32:46
Speaker 2: of the business, except for spirits partnership and beer companies
1:32:53
Speaker 2: that give us boring rights and branding because in India
1:32:56
Speaker 2: you're not allowed to advertise alcohol on mainstream media. This
1:33:02
Speaker 2: is a great way for UH beverage companies and ALG
1:33:07
Speaker 2: beverage companies to sort of interact with their their customers
1:33:12
Speaker 2: and so and then payment partners which to pre sale payments,
1:33:16
Speaker 2: whether it's group pay or credit card companies or banks
1:33:20
Speaker 2: that love the fact that they can get customers to
1:33:23
Speaker 2: move credit cards or payment mechanisms and then pre purchase
1:33:28
Speaker 2: and then and then buy that out so buy tickets.
1:33:30
Speaker 2: So for the touring side of the business, when it
1:33:35
Speaker 2: comes to our Indian touring, and when it comes to
1:33:39
Speaker 2: electronic dance music, there's a younger demographic and an unaddressable
1:33:44
Speaker 2: market and a customers set for which brands sort of
1:33:48
Speaker 2: attach themselves. For the global touring, it becomes very difficult
1:33:51
Speaker 2: because a lot of the artists globally are not used
1:33:56
Speaker 2: to having so many brands on the key visual or
1:34:00
Speaker 2: any brand partnership because that's not how it works in
1:34:03
Speaker 2: the rest of the world. So it's very hard and
1:34:06
Speaker 2: sometimes almost impossible for us to try and convince management
1:34:10
Speaker 2: to talk to the artists that this is a necessary
1:34:15
Speaker 2: part of our business because our costs so much higher.
1:34:20
Speaker 2: Ticket prices are software by thirty percent and we pay
1:34:23
Speaker 2: an eighteen percent GSD which doesn't exist in the other
1:34:26
Speaker 2: parts of the world. And all we are trying to
1:34:28
Speaker 2: do is gap fund that through some brand work that
1:34:34
Speaker 2: we can do, not that we're expecting you to endorse it.
1:34:37
Speaker 2: There's a lot of artists that who've come to India
1:34:39
Speaker 2: again and again get it, and they're like, we're happy
1:34:41
Speaker 2: to not only have that on our cav we're even
1:34:44
Speaker 2: happy to do something else beyond which may help you
1:34:47
Speaker 2: sell more tickets, because we want to keep coming into
1:34:49
Speaker 2: the market, and we think this is a market at
1:34:51
Speaker 2: one point for billin Indians. I want to build my
1:34:54
Speaker 2: career here. I want to be a long term touring artist,
1:34:57
Speaker 2: and so a lot of them do that. But there's
1:34:59
Speaker 2: a lot of artists who are like, Hey, I don't
1:35:01
Speaker 2: want a fossil fuel company, or I don't want an
1:35:03
Speaker 2: alcohol company, or I don't understand this brand why should
1:35:07
Speaker 2: this brand be there. So it becomes harder with global
1:35:09
Speaker 2: touring artists, but it's easier with Indian touring artists. It's
1:35:13
Speaker 2: easier with electronic dance music. It's younger people understand that
1:35:18
Speaker 2: artists don't have a problem. We do face a pushback
1:35:22
Speaker 2: on the global touring side for artists because they have
1:35:24
Speaker 2: announced a global tour, they're playing in fifty cities and
1:35:27
Speaker 2: suddenly it pops up in India in two cities. There's
1:35:30
Speaker 2: a brand and they're like, what the hell is going on?
1:35:31
Speaker 2: So it takes a lot of back and forth for
1:35:33
Speaker 2: us to do that. But as we work with the
1:35:35
Speaker 2: artists who keep coming back, they get it why we're
1:35:38
Speaker 2: doing it and therefore they're a little more open to it.
1:35:41
Speaker 2: But on the festival side, it's far easier. In terms
1:35:44
Speaker 2: of food and beverage. The entire tech that powers the tapex,
1:35:51
Speaker 2: technology that powers the RFID and the data behind and
1:35:54
Speaker 2: because it's a closed new payment system because networks go down,
1:35:58
Speaker 2: we own the tech as well able to do that,
1:36:00
Speaker 2: which gives us a lot more data. And we do
1:36:02
Speaker 2: our own food and beverage because a we want to
1:36:05
Speaker 2: keep the standards high and making sure that nobody gets sick.
1:36:09
Speaker 2: We're getting a highly curated food and beverage experience, and
1:36:13
Speaker 2: we're making sure that customers don't have to wait in
1:36:16
Speaker 2: lines and they're well hydrated. So book my show runs.
1:36:21
Speaker 2: You know. We run a green event as much as
1:36:23
Speaker 2: we can, including the cups that we offered are made
1:36:26
Speaker 2: out of corn husk, which are all recyclable. And if
1:36:30
Speaker 2: you buy that cup and you can get a deposit
1:36:32
Speaker 2: back if you've paid it's like one hundred rupees which
1:36:34
Speaker 2: is a dollar for the cup, and if you return it,
1:36:36
Speaker 2: we'll pay you the money back. But if you buy
1:36:38
Speaker 2: that cup, then your water for the entire festival the
1:36:42
Speaker 2: event is free. We have a charge you for the water, unless,
1:36:44
Speaker 2: of course you're buying mineral or expensive water, but we
1:36:46
Speaker 2: have water stations. Being a warm in a humid country,
1:36:50
Speaker 2: we don't want to profit out of water. But of course,
1:36:53
Speaker 2: if you buy beer, you buy food, you buy other things.
1:36:56
Speaker 2: We run that and a lot of our artists now
1:36:59
Speaker 2: have realized that ringing merchandise in and then carrying that
1:37:04
Speaker 2: back and the costs associated with overages and stock that
1:37:08
Speaker 2: is dead stock, makes no sense. So we work with
1:37:11
Speaker 2: a lot of our artists and managements where we print
1:37:17
Speaker 2: the merchandise on demand in India itself, and if it
1:37:20
Speaker 2: is printed in India and we know what the demand
1:37:23
Speaker 2: estimate is, we also publish that merchandise on our website,
1:37:28
Speaker 2: so kids can buy all their gear online and they
1:37:31
Speaker 2: wear the T shirt before they go for the show.
1:37:34
Speaker 2: Because unlike the West, you don't have various other multi
1:37:39
Speaker 2: format stores where you can buy an ac DC or
1:37:42
Speaker 2: a Metallica or a clothes pay T shirt. They're always
1:37:46
Speaker 2: looking for the tour merchandise and we then offer it
1:37:48
Speaker 2: on our site and you can wear your gear and
1:37:50
Speaker 2: then you can come for the show. So these are
1:37:54
Speaker 2: models which are still evolving. There are some artists that say, listen,
1:37:57
Speaker 2: we're going to bring our merchandise. We don't trust you guys.
1:37:59
Speaker 2: We're going to bring it, We're going to sell it
1:38:01
Speaker 2: take it back. But then they realized that the laws
1:38:03
Speaker 2: in India and paying customs duty, getting it cleared then
1:38:06
Speaker 2: re exporting it out is much harder than us them
1:38:09
Speaker 2: printing it. And as we built our relationships with agents,
1:38:12
Speaker 2: managers and artists and touring you know, the tour managers,
1:38:17
Speaker 2: over the years, it's gotten easier for them to say Hey, listen,
1:38:21
Speaker 2: we just wanted to handle it and give us a
1:38:23
Speaker 2: back end access so we can you know, track everything
1:38:25
Speaker 2: that you do.
1:38:26
Speaker 1: Okay, you were mentioning earlier that you were going to
1:38:31
Speaker 1: get into the construction business. You've established the Really, no
1:38:36
Speaker 1: arenas is this something that book my Show is going
1:38:41
Speaker 1: to go deep into what's going on there.
1:38:45
Speaker 2: Look, this might not be what the book My show
1:38:49
Speaker 2: board or book my Show as a company may do directly,
1:38:54
Speaker 2: but we are deeply involved as a group to be
1:38:59
Speaker 2: able to enable an help build the next five to
1:39:03
Speaker 2: seven venues in the country in the next in five
1:39:08
Speaker 2: or seven cities where we think there will be a
1:39:10
Speaker 2: demand for it being a music first venue. And we've
1:39:15
Speaker 2: got to think of it slightly differently than the rest
1:39:20
Speaker 2: of the world, where either it was done by the
1:39:26
Speaker 2: city administration or the or the or the country it
1:39:30
Speaker 2: was funded for reasons like there was an Olympics there,
1:39:34
Speaker 2: or there was some Commonwealth Games or any sort of
1:39:36
Speaker 2: games in those venues existed. Or in the US where
1:39:42
Speaker 2: you have anchors and you can make money out of
1:39:45
Speaker 2: great branding deals or NFL or sorry hockey NHL or
1:39:53
Speaker 2: or basketball NBA takes on multiple of your dates and
1:39:56
Speaker 2: they become anchors. In India, the way you've got to
1:39:59
Speaker 2: look at it is the venues need to be outside
1:40:02
Speaker 2: in where it becomes a hub where people can come
1:40:05
Speaker 2: and shop and buy and eat food three sixty five
1:40:08
Speaker 2: days of the year. There's music, which is a black
1:40:11
Speaker 2: box where you can have an ed stage format and
1:40:14
Speaker 2: people can, you know, come in and have music. And
1:40:18
Speaker 2: you can cut the arena from a five hundred five
1:40:23
Speaker 2: thousand to a twenty thousand capacity arena and you have
1:40:27
Speaker 2: a lot of spaces where you can have alternative content.
1:40:32
Speaker 2: Weddings are a big part of the Indian DNA where
1:40:36
Speaker 2: families save money for their lifetime to then cost a wedding,
1:40:41
Speaker 2: which becomes a very important part of a checkpoint in
1:40:45
Speaker 2: their existence. Where weddings in a large part of the
1:40:50
Speaker 2: world are could be really tiny and you know, you
1:40:53
Speaker 2: go sign, you have a small party and you're done.
1:40:56
Speaker 2: In India, weddings can be multi day events and families
1:40:59
Speaker 2: put in a lot of their wealth and money into
1:41:03
Speaker 2: having a wedding and these could be used as anchors
1:41:06
Speaker 2: to these spaces that we might create. So we're still discovering,
1:41:11
Speaker 2: we may make mistakes. We're being involved with venues that
1:41:14
Speaker 2: are coming up. India's one the Commonwealth bid. There will
1:41:17
Speaker 2: be Commonwealth venues that are coming up. The government is
1:41:19
Speaker 2: building some of these. They need partners who can help
1:41:23
Speaker 2: manage them, advise them, consult them, make sure food and beverage,
1:41:28
Speaker 2: the ticketing is right. Booking is fined, so we could
1:41:31
Speaker 2: probably be involved in multi ways in each of these venues.
1:41:35
Speaker 2: There's not a cookie cutter model that we have to
1:41:37
Speaker 2: just construct. In some cases you're referbing some of these venues,
1:41:42
Speaker 2: somebody else is paying for it, So we've got a
1:41:44
Speaker 2: whole strategy on how we're dealing with it. It may
1:41:47
Speaker 2: not necessarily done as a part of Book My Show
1:41:50
Speaker 2: because our companies balance sheet and our purpose of the
1:41:54
Speaker 2: organization may very different. But we're involved in many ways
1:41:58
Speaker 2: to make sure that this ecosystem gets built out because
1:42:01
Speaker 2: on the back of this is what we can put
1:42:03
Speaker 2: in more shows, sell more tickets, and then you can
1:42:06
Speaker 2: have a three sixty five day existent rather than just
1:42:09
Speaker 2: six months of the year.
1:42:10
Speaker 1: Okay, to what did we does book my Show operate
1:42:14
Speaker 1: outside of India and going forward? Is this the business
1:42:20
Speaker 1: of book my Show concert promotion as well as selling
1:42:24
Speaker 1: tickets to other events or is there something else on
1:42:28
Speaker 1: the horizon that you're also going to do.
1:42:31
Speaker 2: So, Bob, let me answer your first question in terms
1:42:35
Speaker 2: of outside of India three pandemic book, my short extended
1:42:41
Speaker 2: its tentacles. We were all in this euphoric sort of Hey,
1:42:45
Speaker 2: you know, we want to export out and do a
1:42:47
Speaker 2: lot more. We were present in Indonesia. We had forty
1:42:51
Speaker 2: five people sitting there. We were in Malaysia. We had
1:42:53
Speaker 2: offices in Singapore, in Bangkok, where offices in Bali. We
1:42:58
Speaker 2: were in Abu Dhabi, you're in Dubai. And we were
1:43:01
Speaker 2: doing a bunch of things on ticketing, concert promotion, place,
1:43:04
Speaker 2: family entertainment, stand up comedy, exporting Indian talent, being involved
1:43:09
Speaker 2: in them. And when the pandemic hit, it was a
1:43:13
Speaker 2: really hard time for us. And I keep telling people,
1:43:17
Speaker 2: and this is not just saying what doesn't kill you
1:43:19
Speaker 2: makes you stronger. We've been left for the dead twice now,
1:43:22
Speaker 2: one in two thousand and two and once in during
1:43:25
Speaker 2: the pandemic. And what happened was transformational as a company
1:43:30
Speaker 2: because and I'll come to how we've sort of arrived
1:43:36
Speaker 2: at where we are today. This was a lot of
1:43:38
Speaker 2: soul searching that went for US during that period. I
1:43:42
Speaker 2: lost my mom during COVID in twenty twenty. It was
1:43:46
Speaker 2: August twenty eighth, twenty twenty, and I had to take
1:43:50
Speaker 2: a decision to let it go because it was it
1:43:53
Speaker 2: was getting hard and you know it. It was a
1:43:57
Speaker 2: choice I had to make in the ICU. And so
1:44:02
Speaker 2: during the time I had a boat, me and my
1:44:05
Speaker 2: co founder Rick, we sold our boat. I let my
1:44:08
Speaker 2: mom go, I shut the house, let the house in
1:44:11
Speaker 2: Bombay Coo for a period, I moved to go. I
1:44:14
Speaker 2: was operating out of that and we went back to
1:44:17
Speaker 2: saying we've lost everything and let's see what comes out
1:44:23
Speaker 2: of this. We did four things. We said we're going
1:44:27
Speaker 2: to focus on four things. A is shareholder value. Since
1:44:32
Speaker 2: there was zero revenue coming for close over two years
1:44:36
Speaker 2: for US at book my Show, we said, we have
1:44:38
Speaker 2: an obligation of fiduciary responsibility to cut our our costs,
1:44:44
Speaker 2: and therefore we had no choice but to go down
1:44:48
Speaker 2: from seventeen hundred people down to five point fifty, which
1:44:51
Speaker 2: meant shutting down offices and all markets except for Singapore
1:44:55
Speaker 2: because the Singapore government gave us a you know, a
1:44:58
Speaker 2: grant too. Two rounds of grunts, and we had a
1:45:01
Speaker 2: tech office there, so we shut all other offices down
1:45:05
Speaker 2: and we sort of consolidated the other thing. For twenty years,
1:45:09
Speaker 2: we were only building our We had built a software
1:45:12
Speaker 2: which was homegrown internally, our technology stack, and this was
1:45:16
Speaker 2: the first time that we had a pause with no work,
1:45:19
Speaker 2: so we could rewrite the entire tech stack and move
1:45:22
Speaker 2: it to the cloud and make it forward looking for
1:45:25
Speaker 2: the next decade, which allowed us to shrink the teams
1:45:30
Speaker 2: to be able to operate this, and even our entire
1:45:33
Speaker 2: LLLM models for customer service and support, which were all
1:45:37
Speaker 2: center based, were now all natural language and it was
1:45:42
Speaker 2: self learning. We were using AI right in the early days,
1:45:48
Speaker 2: so we were able to cut our costs down dramatically,
1:45:51
Speaker 2: which was phenomenal, and that was share roader value. The
1:45:55
Speaker 2: second pillar that we focused on was our customers who
1:45:59
Speaker 2: were with us for twenty years, and we said we
1:46:02
Speaker 2: owed to them, and we built a digital platform on
1:46:06
Speaker 2: the site, which was book my Show Stream, and all
1:46:09
Speaker 2: the artists could now put up their shows for free
1:46:13
Speaker 2: and we didn't charge a digital online fee, and all
1:46:17
Speaker 2: our customers could watch their favorite artists sitting at home
1:46:21
Speaker 2: through book my Show Stream and each one of our
1:46:24
Speaker 2: artists would put up their live concerts on book my
1:46:26
Speaker 2: Show stream, so we kept the engagement going. The third
1:46:31
Speaker 2: is we said we will take care of the community
1:46:33
Speaker 2: at large, and so our office building, which is one
1:46:35
Speaker 2: hundred thousand square foot office in Bombay, there were only
1:46:38
Speaker 2: seven people that stayed in the building for close to
1:46:40
Speaker 2: a year year and a half and our chefs in
1:46:43
Speaker 2: the company made one thousand meals a day. And what
1:46:47
Speaker 2: we did was for the local municipal workers, the local
1:46:51
Speaker 2: police station and the local government hospital in this area.
1:46:55
Speaker 2: Thousand meals were served every day from our office. And
1:46:59
Speaker 2: we created a platform where book my Show bought one
1:47:03
Speaker 2: hundred thousand jabs and because the government had started alying
1:47:07
Speaker 2: private guys to sell them, and we created a platform
1:47:11
Speaker 2: where you could book your COVID JAB on the platform
1:47:15
Speaker 2: and come to the office and go through each level
1:47:18
Speaker 2: where we tested you and then we would give the
1:47:19
Speaker 2: job for free to the community. And so we did
1:47:22
Speaker 2: a lot of community work. And the last was that
1:47:28
Speaker 2: we took care of the employees that we of boarded.
1:47:30
Speaker 2: So we created a six member team which was an
1:47:33
Speaker 2: outplacement sell The LinkedIn accounts were paid for for free.
1:47:36
Speaker 2: The professional accounts, and the insurance that we paid for them,
1:47:40
Speaker 2: their families, their kids, and their parents, even though when
1:47:43
Speaker 2: they were off boarded and even if they found a
1:47:45
Speaker 2: job in another company, their insurance was still covered by
1:47:48
Speaker 2: book My Show. So we did four things to take
1:47:50
Speaker 2: care of the four pillars to keep us sane during
1:47:53
Speaker 2: that period of time. And as a part of that consolidation,
1:47:57
Speaker 2: we then decided that we're going to do any of
1:48:00
Speaker 2: this BS and we're going to just focus on India,
1:48:03
Speaker 2: which is such a huge market. It's such a deep market.
1:48:08
Speaker 2: It's going to in the long run reward us for
1:48:12
Speaker 2: investing in the market. Except for our Singapore office, where
1:48:17
Speaker 2: book My Show is a wholly owned subsidiary and we
1:48:20
Speaker 2: have a B to B to see multi tenant, multi geography,
1:48:24
Speaker 2: multi tenant ticketing system. It's more like a SaaS ticketing
1:48:27
Speaker 2: system headed by Kennetton. We've got about twenty five people
1:48:31
Speaker 2: that set out of Singapore, so Gardens by the Bay,
1:48:34
Speaker 2: we used to do the Formula one. We do a
1:48:37
Speaker 2: lot of the ticketing for attractions. All of that in
1:48:40
Speaker 2: that region in Southeast Asia sits out of our Singapore office.
1:48:43
Speaker 2: So outside of that, everything else is consolidated in market.
1:48:56
Speaker 1: Let's do what they call in the US based on
1:48:58
Speaker 1: game shows lightning. I'm gonna ask questions relatively short answers
1:49:03
Speaker 1: because we're running out of time. A In the old days,
1:49:08
Speaker 1: you couldn't make any money the police, their father was
1:49:12
Speaker 1: in the CIA, band member, the manager, they went around
1:49:16
Speaker 1: the world. You could sell records. Records are not really
1:49:19
Speaker 1: a revenue stream at this point in time, especially in
1:49:21
Speaker 1: markets outside of you know, traditional Western markets streaming US, EU,
1:49:28
Speaker 1: Japan maybe, which is more of a physical market. Anyway,
1:49:32
Speaker 1: if I come to India to perform, can I leave
1:49:36
Speaker 1: with any money? Can I make money playing in India?
1:49:41
Speaker 2: Yes?
1:49:43
Speaker 1: To what degree? Can I make the same money if
1:49:46
Speaker 1: I play anywhere else? If I play, let's say in Australia.
1:49:50
Speaker 2: If you if the drawing is well routed, you can
1:49:56
Speaker 2: make money. Like we're routing very well with Southeast Asia
1:50:00
Speaker 2: and the Middle East because our weather patterns are the same,
1:50:03
Speaker 2: which is between October to March, because we don't have
1:50:06
Speaker 2: indoor arenas yet. And if you're flying, you're ending your
1:50:09
Speaker 2: tour with Australia and New Zealand, or you're beginning your
1:50:12
Speaker 2: tour with Australia and New Zealand because it's the other
1:50:16
Speaker 2: weather cycle. If you route yourself, you can make money.
1:50:20
Speaker 2: And the reason I say that is there are at
1:50:23
Speaker 2: least one hundred and fifty flights from fifteen Indian cities
1:50:28
Speaker 2: that connect to fifteen cities in the Middle East every day,
1:50:31
Speaker 2: and there are at least ten to fifteen cities in
1:50:36
Speaker 2: India that connect to about ten cities in Southeast Asia
1:50:40
Speaker 2: with one hundred and fifty flights a day, all within
1:50:43
Speaker 2: a radius of two hours to five hours. And so
1:50:47
Speaker 2: if you route it well, you can make money. What's
1:50:49
Speaker 2: also happening, Bob, is that India is becoming an anchor market,
1:50:53
Speaker 2: not just a one stop. So we have at least
1:50:55
Speaker 2: five markets where you can do a tour. So when
1:50:58
Speaker 2: bands are coming to India, they're doing least three to
1:51:01
Speaker 2: five cities within India and that's when they start making money, okay.
1:51:05
Speaker 2: And if you come as a one off and one
1:51:07
Speaker 2: and done, then you will.
1:51:07
Speaker 1: Not make okay certain countries, you cannot take the profits out.
1:51:13
Speaker 1: If I come to India and by time you're done
1:51:17
Speaker 1: with the accounting, I get a million dollars. Can I
1:51:20
Speaker 1: leave with my million dollars?
1:51:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we pay you from our accounts in Dubai
1:51:29
Speaker 2: or in Singapore which is a wholly owned subsidies. We
1:51:32
Speaker 2: pay you through that and as long as you do
1:51:34
Speaker 2: the withholding tax, which is a double tax treaty that
1:51:38
Speaker 2: India has with most countries in the world, you get
1:51:41
Speaker 2: your input credit in those countries, so you can take
1:51:43
Speaker 2: your money out and leave with it.
1:51:44
Speaker 1: Okay. Is it only superstars that have demand or how
1:51:50
Speaker 1: far down the food chain is there demand and knowledge
1:51:54
Speaker 1: of acts in India.
1:51:58
Speaker 2: India is a very uniqu There is a big market
1:52:02
Speaker 2: for a rock in India and classic rock in India.
1:52:05
Speaker 2: The main big acts of course your Harry Styles and
1:52:09
Speaker 2: Taylor Swifts and you know kpop and all is a market.
1:52:13
Speaker 2: But you've got you know, trending artists like a Fred
1:52:17
Speaker 2: Again and you've got you know, young Blood was an
1:52:21
Speaker 2: absolute revelation at Lalla Plutza and young Blood wanted to
1:52:25
Speaker 2: do a five city tour in India. And young Blood
1:52:28
Speaker 2: has been such a sensation in this market that it's
1:52:34
Speaker 2: like I keep telling folks that India is so unique
1:52:37
Speaker 2: that it will surprise you with every turn. That there
1:52:40
Speaker 2: is a surprise, whether it's a small trending artist like Aurora,
1:52:44
Speaker 2: for example, she did a set in at Lalla Plutza
1:52:48
Speaker 2: cigarettes after sex. I mean bands like these have a
1:52:51
Speaker 2: huge demand in the market in the country, and they've
1:52:54
Speaker 2: come back for shows after they fail.
1:52:56
Speaker 1: Okay, let's use those specific examples. A has young Blood
1:53:00
Speaker 1: come back?
1:53:03
Speaker 2: Young Blood had planned a tour and then.
1:53:05
Speaker 1: Okay, but I understand that the tour that was planned,
1:53:10
Speaker 1: how many tickets is it predicated? How many tickets did
1:53:13
Speaker 1: they need to sell to make it worth work?
1:53:16
Speaker 2: Everybody's while we were looking at fifteen thousand tickets in
1:53:19
Speaker 2: five markets in Indo.
1:53:21
Speaker 1: You talked about Aurora. Aurora can tour by herself.
1:53:26
Speaker 2: Aurora can do about three cities, Bombadeli, Banglo and with
1:53:29
Speaker 2: how many tickets ten thousand cap capacity?
1:53:34
Speaker 1: Okay, when you build a venue there's a long history
1:53:39
Speaker 1: in the United States, then you built events with huge
1:53:44
Speaker 1: security problems. How do you deal with the fact that
1:53:49
Speaker 1: people want to break down the barriers get for free.
1:53:52
Speaker 1: It's not like an arena where it's a physical building.
1:53:55
Speaker 1: How do you deal with security to make sure everybody pays?
1:53:59
Speaker 2: So Bob as booked my show one of the reasons
1:54:02
Speaker 2: why we got into this business. Like I was saying,
1:54:06
Speaker 2: post the pandemic. Everything that we've done in the last
1:54:09
Speaker 2: twenty seven years at any of these venues, we own
1:54:13
Speaker 2: our physical infrastructure. Any of these open venues, Booked my
1:54:17
Speaker 2: Show physically puts in containers, turnstiles, toilets, handel scanners, double security,
1:54:25
Speaker 2: mojo barricading ground covering all of that gear and infrastructure.
1:54:30
Speaker 2: The you know, the barricading, the and the security barricading
1:54:34
Speaker 2: in India was being sold as secure barricading, which did
1:54:38
Speaker 2: not even have an interlocking system. Then there was a
1:54:40
Speaker 2: lot of Chinese stuff that was sold here which was
1:54:42
Speaker 2: twenty four cag's. When we got a hydra and lifted them,
1:54:46
Speaker 2: we realized that none of them were U certified. Till
1:54:48
Speaker 2: book my Show manufactured all of these, and all our
1:54:51
Speaker 2: barricading is thirty six CAGs plus, and so we had
1:54:54
Speaker 2: to get into this business reluctantly. We got into the
1:54:57
Speaker 2: concert promotion business and the infrastructure business, both reluctantly knowing
1:55:02
Speaker 2: that nobody else is doing it and if we didn't,
1:55:05
Speaker 2: we were putting lives at jeopardy and we were not
1:55:07
Speaker 2: being able to sell more tickets and scale the market.
1:55:10
Speaker 2: And therefore today we've necessarily gotten into all of this
1:55:15
Speaker 2: over the last twenty years because at any of these places,
1:55:18
Speaker 2: the entire barricading infrastructure, fencing, scanning, turnstiles, security, gate validation,
1:55:28
Speaker 2: double checks, bond disposal, going through metal detectors, frisking is
1:55:34
Speaker 2: all done by books. We were anyways doing it even
1:55:36
Speaker 2: when we were just the ticketing partners.
1:55:38
Speaker 1: Okay, do you own any of this property? Will you
1:55:41
Speaker 1: do your shows or do you rent slash lease all
1:55:44
Speaker 1: these locations.
1:55:47
Speaker 2: No, we don't own any of these venues or locations.
1:55:50
Speaker 2: We lease them. But a lot of the infrastructure that
1:55:53
Speaker 2: goes down there is provided by us because it doesn't
1:55:57
Speaker 2: exist in the market. The Black Steel stages, we are
1:55:59
Speaker 2: the own guys that own the two Black Steel stages
1:56:01
Speaker 2: in the country.
1:56:03
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say I come to India tour. To what
1:56:09
Speaker 1: degree is there infrastructure or do I have to bring everything?
1:56:15
Speaker 1: To what degree is their sound reinforcement other equipment that
1:56:20
Speaker 1: might be needed for the show? Do I have to
1:56:22
Speaker 1: say I have to bring everything and I better bring
1:56:25
Speaker 1: seconds in case something breaks? Or are there shops or inventory?
1:56:30
Speaker 1: What's the situation?
1:56:32
Speaker 2: You just need to come with your back line. You
1:56:34
Speaker 2: don't need anything. We have robo lights, We have all acoustics.
1:56:38
Speaker 2: We have Maya sound systems. We've got DNB's jbls. You've
1:56:42
Speaker 2: got black steel stages from us. We've got driverbles, floor coverings,
1:56:46
Speaker 2: cable ramps. Our stages are eight point seven meters, trim heights,
1:56:52
Speaker 2: we've got towers. Everything that you need to put on
1:56:55
Speaker 2: a show, we've We've got it all as as far
1:56:58
Speaker 2: as we are concerned. The market may not have it,
1:57:00
Speaker 2: but the company does.
1:57:02
Speaker 1: Let's assume my club and I do successful. You know,
1:57:06
Speaker 1: I sell certainly in access to ten thousand tickets. Will
1:57:11
Speaker 1: there be any after effect or is it one and done?
1:57:18
Speaker 2: So we've always seen a spike for any act that
1:57:22
Speaker 2: comes in. You see a spike on Spotify, you see
1:57:24
Speaker 2: a spike on YouTube, and there is a demand that
1:57:27
Speaker 2: gets created. So we had Guns and Roses that came
1:57:30
Speaker 2: in last year and we did a show in Mumbai.
1:57:32
Speaker 2: Guns and Roses has come back and we've sold massive
1:57:36
Speaker 2: sellout shows in Bangalore and Gohati. Gohati is a market
1:57:39
Speaker 2: in the northeast further northeast of Calcutta, about a two
1:57:42
Speaker 2: hour flight from north north northeast of Calcutta and which
1:57:47
Speaker 2: caters to fifty five million people in the northeast of
1:57:51
Speaker 2: the country and Guns and Roses has sold out. So
1:57:54
Speaker 2: they came in last year, they did a show in Mumbai.
1:57:58
Speaker 2: Now they're doing Bombay and they're doing back Lord and
1:58:00
Speaker 2: Gohati and so you will see that ripple effect where
1:58:03
Speaker 2: there's a huge demand for x that come back and
1:58:07
Speaker 2: then they can do multiple cities and multiple tours.
1:58:10
Speaker 1: Okay, there's long history of infrastructure in the US, UK, EU.
1:58:17
Speaker 1: Now there's been a big evolution with the Internet, but
1:58:20
Speaker 1: there used to be television, radio. They still exist, they're
1:58:24
Speaker 1: just not as powerful today. We have all the streaming
1:58:28
Speaker 1: platforms DSPs that Spotify's, the Apples, but we also have
1:58:32
Speaker 1: platforms like TikTok, Instagram, reels, YouTube that are not music first.
1:58:38
Speaker 1: Weird do people in India find out about their music?
1:58:46
Speaker 2: So the biggest platform for music discovery in India is YouTube.
1:58:52
Speaker 2: It's it's massive. You have an ad supported version and
1:58:56
Speaker 2: a free version. There is Spotify, There's Apple, There's Salmon,
1:59:03
Speaker 2: there's Ghana. These are the local platforms which are discovery platforms.
1:59:09
Speaker 2: There's also, like I said, in India and Netflix, Amazon Prime,
1:59:13
Speaker 2: you name it, Apple CV. All the global platforms exist.
1:59:17
Speaker 2: When we did the Coldplay concert on Geo Hotstar. We
1:59:20
Speaker 2: live streamed the twenty sixth January Coldplay concert and it
1:59:27
Speaker 2: got the second highest live viewership outside of cricket in
1:59:31
Speaker 2: India and then it stayed on the platform for a year.
1:59:33
Speaker 2: It was the most successful live streaming of a concert
1:59:37
Speaker 2: in the country ever. And so all the global platforms
1:59:40
Speaker 2: except for TikTok exists in India and people use all
1:59:44
Speaker 2: of these to discover new music. And then once you
1:59:47
Speaker 2: do a live show. We've seen a spike in people's
1:59:53
Speaker 2: habits on these digital platforms and it feeds off each other.
1:59:57
Speaker 2: You'll see a spike before once we announce the show,
2:00:00
Speaker 2: you'll suddenly a spike, and when the concerts or the
2:00:03
Speaker 2: shows and the touring happens, you'll see the spike that
2:00:06
Speaker 2: stays afterwards and then it becomes a new normal before
2:00:10
Speaker 2: you bring them back on a second tour.
2:00:13
Speaker 1: To what degree is your business domestic acts at the
2:00:18
Speaker 1: ten thousand plus level as opposed to international apps.
2:00:26
Speaker 2: So I would say about fifty percent of our domestic
2:00:32
Speaker 2: acts can do ten thousand plus and these are not
2:00:35
Speaker 2: typically just Hindi, but they will be in Tamil, in Knor,
2:00:40
Speaker 2: in Telgu which are the regional languages in the southern
2:00:43
Speaker 2: part of the country. We just did a tour of Anio,
2:00:47
Speaker 2: the big artists in the south of the country, and
2:00:51
Speaker 2: you know, we sold twenty five thirty thousand tickets for
2:00:53
Speaker 2: each of the shows and concerts. So we have a
2:00:56
Speaker 2: lot of acts where we work with our artists which
2:01:00
Speaker 2: can do large shows. But what's what's very critical for
2:01:06
Speaker 2: our Indian touring acts is that because of the language
2:01:12
Speaker 2: and that the production can be lighter because unlike Western
2:01:17
Speaker 2: acts which come with very heavy production, we can take
2:01:22
Speaker 2: and penetrate a larger number of cities, which is getting
2:01:27
Speaker 2: fans used to going out for live shows and live events.
2:01:30
Speaker 2: We're still building the market. So a lot of our
2:01:32
Speaker 2: Indian acts just don't limit themselves to the top two
2:01:35
Speaker 2: or three cities, but we can do a twenty city
2:01:37
Speaker 2: run with some of them now. One of the things
2:01:41
Speaker 2: which I loved about Ed was Ed had already done.
2:01:45
Speaker 2: He had come many years ago and done a very
2:01:46
Speaker 2: low ticket price for twelve thousand cap capacity. He came
2:01:51
Speaker 2: back and did a really high ticket price for ten thousand.
2:01:55
Speaker 2: Then he did an even higher tan.
2:01:57
Speaker 1: We're referring to Ed Shearing just to be insurance.
2:02:00
Speaker 2: Yes, and then he came and did an eighth city,
2:02:04
Speaker 2: nine city run and went deep in the country as
2:02:07
Speaker 2: an international artist. One of the things that he turned
2:02:10
Speaker 2: around and said, I'm willing to do is work with
2:02:13
Speaker 2: you and your local production to be able to cut
2:02:17
Speaker 2: down a show which works for me as an end
2:02:19
Speaker 2: stage format, because at that time he had a in
2:02:22
Speaker 2: the round show and he said, I'll do a loop
2:02:24
Speaker 2: station end stage format, but I want to go deep
2:02:26
Speaker 2: in the country. I want to be able to do
2:02:28
Speaker 2: a new music video. And that's on the back of
2:02:30
Speaker 2: that show. He had done that music video which was
2:02:33
Speaker 2: which was Sapphire, which came out of out of India
2:02:36
Speaker 2: on that tour when he was doing that eighth city
2:02:38
Speaker 2: run and we really appreciate it. We went on a
2:02:41
Speaker 2: limb to be able to produce that show. It wasn't easy.
2:02:45
Speaker 2: But then we went deep in the country. We did Chennai,
2:02:48
Speaker 2: we did Puna, we did Bangalore, we did a Hyderbad,
2:02:50
Speaker 2: We did Bhutan which was timpoo, so we did go
2:02:54
Speaker 2: hot we did Shillong in the northeast of the country.
2:02:57
Speaker 2: So it was it was incredible to see an international
2:03:00
Speaker 2: artists say that I'm willing to take the local production
2:03:03
Speaker 2: as long as I meet these standards, but take me
2:03:05
Speaker 2: deep in the market.
2:03:07
Speaker 1: Okay, we're talking that. You said that rock is heavy
2:03:09
Speaker 1: in India. We're also talking global superstars, other genres, hip hop,
2:03:17
Speaker 1: country forgetting stuff that's really country specific. But a lot
2:03:21
Speaker 1: of these acts stream around the world. Kendrick Lamar Drake
2:03:26
Speaker 1: want to come to India. What's the demand for them?
2:03:31
Speaker 2: Massive? We did Travis Scott last year and we had
2:03:36
Speaker 2: three sold out shows, two in Deli back to back,
2:03:38
Speaker 2: one in Bombay, all fifty thousand gap capacity. So Drake,
2:03:41
Speaker 2: Kendrick Lamard Eminem, you know, I mean any hip hop
2:03:45
Speaker 2: is massive in India. I would say K pop has
2:03:49
Speaker 2: a huge demand as well in India. A country, I
2:03:53
Speaker 2: would say the top artists. I mean, if you still
2:03:57
Speaker 2: say Taylor Swift this country, which is not really she's
2:04:00
Speaker 2: in stream not anymore. But I would say country could
2:04:03
Speaker 2: be a hit and miss. It's still well.
2:04:06
Speaker 1: Let's assume let's assume the biggest act in country, Morgan
2:04:09
Speaker 1: Wallen wants to come to India. People know who he is.
2:04:13
Speaker 1: He can sell tickets.
2:04:16
Speaker 2: I'm not so sure. It'll start with smaller rooms in
2:04:19
Speaker 2: smaller capacities. Still we scale that up. I would do
2:04:22
Speaker 2: something at a festival like a Lallapluza or you know,
2:04:25
Speaker 2: one of the one of the festivals that we run
2:04:27
Speaker 2: to prime the market before we can. It's not a
2:04:30
Speaker 2: sound that a lot of Indians would take two right
2:04:35
Speaker 2: up front or even Latino music for them, for example,
2:04:39
Speaker 2: given what these artists get paid in North America, they
2:04:44
Speaker 2: would have an expectation for those fees coming out of India.
2:04:48
Speaker 2: And then you can't just make the math work.
2:04:50
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, if you're talking about these shows from international
2:04:56
Speaker 1: acts that sell ten, fifteen, twenty five thousand tickets, do
2:05:01
Speaker 1: the ticket prices tend to be the same or do
2:05:05
Speaker 1: they vary based on the heat and the name of
2:05:08
Speaker 1: the act.
2:05:10
Speaker 2: No, they change because of the name of the act.
2:05:14
Speaker 2: If it's older, you can have more VIP and more
2:05:17
Speaker 2: expensive tickets. India doesn't have a secondary ticket market. It's
2:05:20
Speaker 2: a pure primary ticket sales market. And therefore what we
2:05:25
Speaker 2: tend to do is that we have a phase wisor
2:05:30
Speaker 2: staggered ticket pricing where we open with early birds or
2:05:35
Speaker 2: early access tickets and as with most of the times
2:05:38
Speaker 2: are our ticket price is sort of scale up towards
2:05:44
Speaker 2: as the sales go, so we open up our tickets
2:05:46
Speaker 2: and phases and as you hit those markers, the ticket
2:05:49
Speaker 2: prices keep jumping up. And all of the tickets are
2:05:53
Speaker 2: primary tickets. So our average ticket price for say, for example,
2:06:01
Speaker 2: a festival like Lallapaluza right now is maybe one hundred
2:06:08
Speaker 2: dollars for a two day pass which is the GA pass,
2:06:14
Speaker 2: and then as you go to VIP it could go
2:06:16
Speaker 2: up to three hundred, four hundred, even five hundred dollars
2:06:19
Speaker 2: for a VIV ticket.
2:06:20
Speaker 1: And why is there not a secondary market because demand
2:06:25
Speaker 1: is only so large.
2:06:28
Speaker 2: No, bob. So let me tell you. Before the GSD era,
2:06:31
Speaker 2: there used to be something called E tax where you
2:06:33
Speaker 2: had to pay your tax in advance and because you
2:06:37
Speaker 2: had paid your tax in advance, you had to declare
2:06:40
Speaker 2: your categories, your phases, your sections in advance and you
2:06:45
Speaker 2: could not change the price or you could not sell
2:06:48
Speaker 2: at a differential price. And therefore it was illegal in
2:06:51
Speaker 2: India during the E tax regime to have a secondary
2:06:55
Speaker 2: ticket market. Having said that, once the GSDs come in,
2:07:00
Speaker 2: there should be an open market for you to be
2:07:02
Speaker 2: able to do that. But I think it's more a
2:07:05
Speaker 2: social issue rather than a legal issue. And therefore in
2:07:10
Speaker 2: a country that there is still a long way to
2:07:13
Speaker 2: go to understand how these systems work. I think it's
2:07:17
Speaker 2: more of a social issue which will become a legal issue.
2:07:20
Speaker 2: I remember when we had Coldplay on sale and there
2:07:23
Speaker 2: was a big, you know issue in the market because
2:07:27
Speaker 2: there were millions of people in the queue and they
2:07:31
Speaker 2: were waiting to buy Coldplay tickets and they were we
2:07:34
Speaker 2: had opened up only four tickets instead of eight. We
2:07:37
Speaker 2: had done four and India I was working with the
2:07:39
Speaker 2: management and live nation that we had we had zeroed
2:07:43
Speaker 2: it down to four tickets per transaction. And what had
2:07:46
Speaker 2: happened is that the tickets went in a jiffy. Everybody
2:07:49
Speaker 2: was in a queue, they got a que number and
2:07:51
Speaker 2: the que didn't move because the first guys that had
2:07:55
Speaker 2: were in the queue caught the ticket. And then we
2:07:57
Speaker 2: opened a new queue for the next show and the
2:07:59
Speaker 2: next show ones after that, and there was a big,
2:08:03
Speaker 2: you know, social media backlash in the country because this
2:08:06
Speaker 2: is the first time whether demand outstripped the supply, because
2:08:09
Speaker 2: otherwise tickets are always available and therefore, you know, people
2:08:15
Speaker 2: went to the court and they went and made complaints
2:08:18
Speaker 2: and they just didn't understand the maturity wasn't there on
2:08:21
Speaker 2: how this really worked, and I think it's getting there.
2:08:24
Speaker 2: With what's happening with IPL and Cricket and some of
2:08:27
Speaker 2: the bigger shows that we're doing which have a high demand.
2:08:30
Speaker 2: People are getting used to that, so I think it
2:08:32
Speaker 2: is going. It's still a while away in India where
2:08:35
Speaker 2: secondary ticket can be opened up. So while book my
2:08:39
Speaker 2: show has a secondary sales platform, what we've done that
2:08:43
Speaker 2: is for genuine customers who want to who've bought a
2:08:46
Speaker 2: ticket and want to offload it to somebody else, they
2:08:49
Speaker 2: sell it at the price at which they bought it.
2:08:51
Speaker 2: They can't jack up the price above the primary ticket price.
2:08:55
Speaker 2: So if they genuinely want to sell it to somebody
2:08:56
Speaker 2: else or transfer their tickets, they can do that. They
2:08:58
Speaker 2: can't charge a higher price. So everything is pretty much primary.
2:09:02
Speaker 1: Okay, Where is this business constricted? Is it that you
2:09:06
Speaker 1: can only do so many shows or not enough international
2:09:11
Speaker 1: acts want to come?
2:09:13
Speaker 2: I would say not enough international acts wanted to come
2:09:16
Speaker 2: was something that we faced just pre pandemic and after
2:09:20
Speaker 2: the pandemic. I think Lalla Plueza's helped us open up
2:09:24
Speaker 2: the market a lot, and Charlie has been really helpful
2:09:30
Speaker 2: and his team Houston On speaking so well about the
2:09:34
Speaker 2: market and the work that we do that in one
2:09:37
Speaker 2: festival you end up getting twenty acts global acts that
2:09:40
Speaker 2: come twenty on one shot, and then they're touring managers,
2:09:44
Speaker 2: their agents and managers go back and speak well about
2:09:46
Speaker 2: us if we've done a good job, and I think
2:09:49
Speaker 2: we've done a swell job of executing at global standards,
2:09:54
Speaker 2: and they go back and they tell stories about how
2:09:56
Speaker 2: great it was. There was a real fandom and they
2:09:59
Speaker 2: enjoyed themselves and they want to come back into the market.
2:10:01
Speaker 2: So over the years, I think that volume is growing.
2:10:05
Speaker 2: There's a real you know, artists are smart. They're seeing
2:10:09
Speaker 2: that data. They have analytics available to them on global platforms.
2:10:12
Speaker 2: They're seeing where the demand is coming from. A lot
2:10:15
Speaker 2: of them, their fans or their listeners are from India
2:10:19
Speaker 2: and the top global fifty by show volume of people
2:10:22
Speaker 2: that exist in this country, and they want to come
2:10:24
Speaker 2: and play the market, and they have a trusted partner
2:10:27
Speaker 2: in US to be able to execute what they want
2:10:29
Speaker 2: to do. I think what's limiting us today is that
2:10:32
Speaker 2: we don't have the infrastructure to be able to cater
2:10:35
Speaker 2: to a three sixty five days twelve months of the
2:10:37
Speaker 2: year touring market where if they are touring in other
2:10:41
Speaker 2: parts of the world and they want to come, we
2:10:43
Speaker 2: can't give them a stadium, we can't give them an arena,
2:10:45
Speaker 2: we cannot play in certain weather patterns or whether zones
2:10:50
Speaker 2: in the country. And once we address that over the
2:10:53
Speaker 2: next you know, three to four years, we should be
2:10:55
Speaker 2: in a better place. I think the demand for global
2:10:58
Speaker 2: artists to come and play is growing. You have to
2:11:01
Speaker 2: remember that we also have a huge Indian touring business
2:11:05
Speaker 2: and Indian touring artists which play in various languages. While
2:11:08
Speaker 2: they may not be at the scale of global artists today,
2:11:11
Speaker 2: but I see a lot of that volume building up
2:11:13
Speaker 2: where they're being able to do a lot more cities
2:11:15
Speaker 2: and be more agile, and that's helping build a fan
2:11:19
Speaker 2: basis for live events in those cities in India At.
2:11:24
Speaker 1: This point in time, certainly, for US acts to go
2:11:28
Speaker 1: across the Pacific is a huge leap. Almost nobody ever
2:11:33
Speaker 1: does it every year. Most do it every few years
2:11:36
Speaker 1: at most. When those tours are planned, are you at
2:11:40
Speaker 1: the ground floor, Are people aware of the fact there
2:11:44
Speaker 1: are dates to be played in India? Or do you
2:11:48
Speaker 1: sometimes find out after the fact, or do you have
2:11:50
Speaker 1: to be aggressive say hey, i'm here, you should include me.
2:11:54
Speaker 2: It's a bit of both. We get a lot of
2:11:57
Speaker 2: inbound of artists saying planning a global tour and we're
2:12:02
Speaker 2: going to be playing in the region, or we're in Europe.
2:12:06
Speaker 2: We largely get linked to through Australia and New Zealand
2:12:12
Speaker 2: because India is a stopover on the way, or we
2:12:15
Speaker 2: get linked to the Middle East, South Africa and Southeast Asia.
2:12:18
Speaker 2: On this side also purely bob because our time frame
2:12:23
Speaker 2: is mid October to May at best April, I would say,
2:12:28
Speaker 2: so October to May is our season. So October to May,
2:12:31
Speaker 2: if it's in the Middle East where it's not that hot,
2:12:33
Speaker 2: the weather pattern suits the same weather pattern in India
2:12:37
Speaker 2: because it's not training, it's dry, it's much cooler for
2:12:41
Speaker 2: fans to be outdoors. That's the time where we can
2:12:44
Speaker 2: book most of our work. So a lot of most
2:12:46
Speaker 2: of our work for global artists happens between November and April.
2:12:50
Speaker 1: Well, that's awesome when they go to Australia and New
2:12:52
Speaker 1: Zealand because it's you know, the opposite season.
2:12:55
Speaker 2: Correct, So when they're routing through there, that's when they
2:12:58
Speaker 2: stop over. Now, what tends to happen is that many
2:13:02
Speaker 2: at times we discover that they're putting up a five
2:13:05
Speaker 2: city or a ten city tour in Southeast Asia, and
2:13:09
Speaker 2: then they're going, we want to get in the middle
2:13:10
Speaker 2: of that, and then explain to them that we can
2:13:13
Speaker 2: add on three dates of yours in India and it's
2:13:17
Speaker 2: not too far and it can be as a part
2:13:19
Speaker 2: of the Asia run or a part of the Middle
2:13:21
Speaker 2: East run. We've got partnerships with Live Nation, we work
2:13:23
Speaker 2: with ag we work with a lot of our friends
2:13:26
Speaker 2: in both these regions, even guys from ovig who are
2:13:30
Speaker 2: booking a lot of acts in Nabudhabi. Where we start
2:13:34
Speaker 2: working with partnerships to say, you know, why don't we
2:13:36
Speaker 2: create a mini tour between the Middle East and India
2:13:39
Speaker 2: and so that it becomes far more profitable for the bands.
2:13:42
Speaker 2: Instead of just doing five cities in the Middle East,
2:13:45
Speaker 2: we can add two cities in South Africa, we can
2:13:49
Speaker 2: do three shows in India, and then it becomes a
2:13:51
Speaker 2: package of maybe eight to ten shows, which then starts
2:13:54
Speaker 2: making more sense for the acts if they're on their
2:13:56
Speaker 2: way from New Zealand and otherwise. So I think it's
2:13:59
Speaker 2: a bit of both, like, for example, between you and me.
2:14:02
Speaker 2: I mean we can talk about this because this show
2:14:04
Speaker 2: is going to come out later. H Fred did it.
2:14:07
Speaker 2: Fred again did a teaser today which came out and
2:14:10
Speaker 2: everybody knows that he's coming to India. This is a
2:14:13
Speaker 2: one off. We're doing a three cite tour in December
2:14:15
Speaker 2: this year and tomorrow's the registration announced. I mean, I
2:14:18
Speaker 2: can talk to you about it today. It's actually happening tomorrow.
2:14:22
Speaker 2: But it's a one off where Fred wanted to play
2:14:25
Speaker 2: the market and we've been working very closely with his
2:14:27
Speaker 2: management and these shows are happening because the artists wanted
2:14:32
Speaker 2: to play the market. This was an important moment for
2:14:35
Speaker 2: the artists. He wanted to play the market. He said,
2:14:38
Speaker 2: I want to play India. I don't care about what
2:14:41
Speaker 2: my global touring looks like right now, but I want
2:14:43
Speaker 2: to play the market and I want to do a
2:14:44
Speaker 2: three state tour. You've got artists like that or with
2:14:47
Speaker 2: young Blood. But then there are others where there's these
2:14:49
Speaker 2: huge acts which require their global machinery to move in
2:14:54
Speaker 2: a certain way otherwise it becomes unprofitable for them.
2:14:57
Speaker 1: Are there any act in India?
2:14:59
Speaker 2: You know?
2:14:59
Speaker 1: You you portray a block and I've seen it best
2:15:02
Speaker 1: with people singing in different languages, et cetera. But are
2:15:07
Speaker 1: there one, two or three acts in India? They could
2:15:12
Speaker 1: break internationally if properly promoted.
2:15:16
Speaker 2: So look, there are already some acts which I think
2:15:20
Speaker 2: are global. Sounds are huge and they're not just catering
2:15:23
Speaker 2: to the Indian diaspora even though their language like say,
2:15:27
Speaker 2: for example, bad Money, Who's Who's Who's let who sings
2:15:31
Speaker 2: in Latin, but Who's Latino? Who sings in Spanish? But
2:15:35
Speaker 2: it's a sound that people love and they sort of
2:15:38
Speaker 2: have taken too. You know, Diljit Dosange is a Punjabi
2:15:43
Speaker 2: hip hop you know Punjabi singer who is from Punjab
2:15:48
Speaker 2: but lives in Canada and he does all his recording
2:15:51
Speaker 2: and producing. There is a global artist, is a global act.
2:15:55
Speaker 2: He's huge. He's playing to Pactorina's, Madison Square Gardens, scop Live,
2:16:00
Speaker 2: He's doing massive shows across the world, not just in India.
2:16:05
Speaker 2: There's a huge movement of current Nodula Who's another hip
2:16:09
Speaker 2: hop artists Api Dylan. All of these are Punjabi artists
2:16:13
Speaker 2: which sing in different dialects and have a different sound
2:16:16
Speaker 2: to them and then in terms of hip hop, who
2:16:18
Speaker 2: sings in English is Hanuman Kind. He's a dear friend
2:16:21
Speaker 2: of mine. His name is Suraj, but he goes by
2:16:23
Speaker 2: the trade name of Hanuman Kind. Want an artist. If
2:16:26
Speaker 2: you see his music Big Dogs and you see it
2:16:30
Speaker 2: on YouTube, it's got over three hundred million, three fifty
2:16:34
Speaker 2: million views on that one song alone, and he's done
2:16:38
Speaker 2: a lot of collapse with international artists. So is Diljit.
2:16:43
Speaker 2: Diljit came out on stage with Edge Shurin for the
2:16:45
Speaker 2: fifty five thousand show. Arajit singers, a great artist who
2:16:48
Speaker 2: did a collab with Ed Shurin on Sapphire. So you've
2:16:53
Speaker 2: you've got a lot of these Indian artists. On the
2:16:56
Speaker 2: rock genre, You've got Bloody Wood, who I absolutely love.
2:17:00
Speaker 2: They're a heavy metal band out of Delhi. They've played
2:17:04
Speaker 2: at lallaplude Za, and they've played at Bandland, and they
2:17:07
Speaker 2: play at global stages. And a lot of these artists
2:17:10
Speaker 2: have played at Coachella. They've they've performed at various festivals
2:17:14
Speaker 2: across the world, including Coachella. So there is a movement
2:17:18
Speaker 2: that's suddenly taking place. And I think streaming really helps
2:17:22
Speaker 2: because once this sound gets out and you find listeners
2:17:25
Speaker 2: and people are listening to that sound on the top
2:17:27
Speaker 2: Global fifty, you then know that there's a real touring
2:17:30
Speaker 2: market for them.
2:17:32
Speaker 3: So what about book my show gets you off? Is
2:17:35
Speaker 3: it building a business? Is it the tech, is it
2:17:40
Speaker 3: the music, it's the people? Obviously all of those things
2:17:44
Speaker 3: are interesting to you, But what is the essence that
2:17:47
Speaker 3: makes it exciting that you want to do the work
2:17:49
Speaker 3: every day?
2:17:51
Speaker 2: Bob, I think we are creating a cultural moment in
2:17:53
Speaker 2: this country. Right. We started off as a tech company,
2:17:55
Speaker 2: which was deep, it was steeped in data, but using
2:17:59
Speaker 2: that a backbone, I think we're creating a cultural movement
2:18:05
Speaker 2: and a nuance in the country and being in the
2:18:07
Speaker 2: forefront of building something so unique that you know, the
2:18:12
Speaker 2: country didn't exist or have. And we have so many
2:18:15
Speaker 2: people that come to us and say, hey, listen, I
2:18:19
Speaker 2: got engaged at your show, or you know, I met
2:18:22
Speaker 2: my wife my future wife, I mean at your show,
2:18:25
Speaker 2: and you know you've You've created memories for us which
2:18:28
Speaker 2: we only dreamt of. And I think it's that response
2:18:32
Speaker 2: of being able to create a cultural moment. Also working
2:18:35
Speaker 2: with artists to give them the big stage, like we've
2:18:38
Speaker 2: had artists from small parts of the country which don't
2:18:41
Speaker 2: even have an airport and they needed a bus to
2:18:43
Speaker 2: get to an airport which is twenty four hours away.
2:18:46
Speaker 2: And then we give them a Lallapaluza stage, or we
2:18:48
Speaker 2: give them an opening act for a Lincoln Park, or
2:18:52
Speaker 2: we give them an opening act for def Leppard. I mean,
2:18:54
Speaker 2: these are moments where we know that we're doing something,
2:18:58
Speaker 2: but we are the backroom guys. We're standing behind all
2:19:00
Speaker 2: of this. We're never in the forefront. And it gives
2:19:03
Speaker 2: us that pleasure on a Friday evening over a drink
2:19:06
Speaker 2: talking amongst each other and saying, you know what, we
2:19:08
Speaker 2: did it and coming together as a team with all
2:19:12
Speaker 2: the crisis that we deal with. But at the end
2:19:15
Speaker 2: of the day, this is such a personable business where
2:19:19
Speaker 2: you meet folks across the world who are some of
2:19:24
Speaker 2: the nicest people, and they're you know, they're in it
2:19:29
Speaker 2: for the love of the art or the music, and
2:19:34
Speaker 2: you all come together from so many different countries, from
2:19:37
Speaker 2: so many backgrounds, but you're in it together for putting
2:19:40
Speaker 2: up those three hours, and then you go back and
2:19:43
Speaker 2: you always remember those stories and when you catch up
2:19:45
Speaker 2: with them. When I'm in la I meet them in London,
2:19:48
Speaker 2: we come across some of these guys work with others.
2:19:50
Speaker 2: It picks up with those same stories and because you're
2:19:53
Speaker 2: in that crisis together, there's never a dull moment you
2:19:56
Speaker 2: pick it up. I mean, I wouldn't have it any
2:19:58
Speaker 2: other way. And it's not about the money, it's not
2:20:00
Speaker 2: about the glory, it's not about you know, any of that.
2:20:04
Speaker 2: It's it's and look, just one last piece that I
2:20:08
Speaker 2: wanted to tell you. As a part of what we're doing,
2:20:12
Speaker 2: we started encouraging our fans to pay one rupee a ticket,
2:20:17
Speaker 2: which we said is a part of book a Change,
2:20:20
Speaker 2: And we said we're going to take this one one
2:20:24
Speaker 2: rupee and apart from two percent of the profits that
2:20:26
Speaker 2: we make, we pull these resources. We said, we're going
2:20:30
Speaker 2: to make a change in the country, not for food, shelter,
2:20:33
Speaker 2: clothing or any of that, but for music and the arts.
2:20:37
Speaker 2: So whether it's a theater in Mumbai which is called
2:20:40
Speaker 2: Prithvie Theater, which is a trust and a charity and
2:20:43
Speaker 2: it's a one hundred seater thrust which has been running
2:20:47
Speaker 2: for forty years. We've been a part of their you know,
2:20:53
Speaker 2: charity initiative and supporting them for the last ten years
2:20:56
Speaker 2: to make sure that the arts don't die and that
2:20:59
Speaker 2: theater survives the same we've done with sport. We had
2:21:04
Speaker 2: this group of girls out of Jarkun, which is a
2:21:08
Speaker 2: state in the center of India, and there's a capital
2:21:12
Speaker 2: city called Ranchi outside of that seventy kilometers outside. There
2:21:15
Speaker 2: were these young girls which were forced to believe that
2:21:19
Speaker 2: their brothers or their fathers are the only ones that
2:21:23
Speaker 2: can study and then make a livelihood. Their place was
2:21:26
Speaker 2: in the kitchen and they needed to have to cook,
2:21:28
Speaker 2: clean and then eventually get married. And as they turn eighteen,
2:21:33
Speaker 2: their sort of folks with get them married. What we
2:21:36
Speaker 2: started doing is working with a charity called Yuba which
2:21:38
Speaker 2: focused on education through sports and book. A Change started
2:21:44
Speaker 2: funding this charity about ten years ago and we fully
2:21:46
Speaker 2: supported this charity and these girls eventually got so confident,
2:21:51
Speaker 2: and we got a lot of backlash from the village
2:21:53
Speaker 2: folks to say, you're spoiling our girls, and we said no,
2:21:55
Speaker 2: we want to support them and they started going to
2:21:58
Speaker 2: English medium school. One of the girls made it to
2:22:00
Speaker 2: a full scholarship to Howard A Wow now the whole
2:22:04
Speaker 2: village and it's a story on which was covered in
2:22:07
Speaker 2: the us as well, and you'll see that they're wearing
2:22:11
Speaker 2: a charity T shirt from from Book a Change. And
2:22:14
Speaker 2: we've done and changed lives by going to municipal school
2:22:18
Speaker 2: and giving instruments and getting teachers, going to slums and
2:22:21
Speaker 2: getting those kids to learn how to DJ and making
2:22:23
Speaker 2: a life where they can go to parties and get
2:22:25
Speaker 2: a livelihood. So the work that we're doing through this
2:22:29
Speaker 2: makes the whole company come together, not for the profits,
2:22:32
Speaker 2: but we believe that we are some change agents, that
2:22:35
Speaker 2: we are being able to make a difference. And this
2:22:37
Speaker 2: is this is something that we've done from day one
2:22:41
Speaker 2: of this organization, So it's not something that we've suddenly
2:22:43
Speaker 2: had a premonition and we're doing from today. It's just
2:22:46
Speaker 2: grown to a much larger movement because we've grown larger.
2:22:49
Speaker 3: Okay, Ashesh, I think we've come to the end of
2:22:52
Speaker 3: the feeling we've known. You're a very smart, articulate guy.
2:22:57
Speaker 3: You sell the story. Well, it's just suddenly fascinating. I've
2:23:00
Speaker 3: only been to India once, but it's just mind blowing.
2:23:03
Speaker 3: The funniest thing was I was in um Mumbai. Everybody
2:23:07
Speaker 3: I knew had been everybody ran into, had been to
2:23:10
Speaker 3: college and had a graduate degree like yourself. Now people
2:23:14
Speaker 3: have a misconception of what's going on in India. You're
2:23:18
Speaker 3: doing a great job spreading the word. I know this
2:23:20
Speaker 3: has been incredibly informative for me. Sure it will be
2:23:23
Speaker 3: for so many other people. Thanks for taking this time
2:23:26
Speaker 3: with my audience.
2:23:29
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me, Bob. This was great and
2:23:31
Speaker 2: I'd look forward to seeing you when I'm in LA.
2:23:33
Speaker 1: The next time you bet, till next time. This is
2:23:36
Speaker 1: Bob left sets