Huge Headroom In The Indian Ecosystem For Out Of Home Experiences: Ashish Hemrajani, BookMyShow

At the 2nd edition of BW Applause and everythingexperiential.com Summit, Ashish Hemrajani, Founder and CEO, Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. spoke about ‘The Blueprint for Creating Successful IPs’ in a fireside chat with Dr. Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld and exchange4media Group.

When asked about what it meant to be seen as the next Indian Unicorn, Hemrajani said, “I think the problem with most new companies and entrepreneurs, and media has a part to play in this, is that the only story is how much money have you raised and I think those are not very good metrics.”

“I think a unicorn is an animal that doesn’t exist, it’s a horse with a horn and when people ask me what we are, I say we are cockroaches because we are survivors. We have survived for 20 years. I mean it is the survivor of the fittest and we have been around for long enough.”

Speaking about the challenges that he has faced over the years in order to set up his super successful business, Hemrajani said, “I don’t think we as people or business model or what we do every day changed, actually the business environment changed.  I don’t think we can give ourselves too much credit or berate ourselves too much. I think the biggest challenge was that in 1999 we were ahead of our time and we had to face tough situations because of that.”

When asked how he would like to define his company, Hemrajani added that his was a consumer company first and not a technology company as many would like to believe. 

“We are a consumer company. I’m not  a technology guy, I don’t have a Facebook account , I don’t check emails, I don’t Tweet, I don’t have an Instagram account, so this saying that I’m a  technology company , and classifying companies into brick and mortar and new age companies, is a fallacy. All companies are merging together.”

He added, “Today if you see any of the internet companies, and the backbones that they have built, they have built warehouses, they have got home delivery. You look at any company which started as a tech company, it now has brick and mortar presence, and all the brick and mortar companies today are using technology in the front end to harness the consumer experience. So I think you don’t need to classify businesses into technology and non technology.”

Speaking about the Live Experience industry and its scope in India, Hemrajani stated, “I think there is huge headroom in the Indian ecosystem for out of home experiences. I think there are a lot of challenges which the live industry is facing. Number one is the tax rates; they are still the highest for the Live industry. The GST is now down to 18 per cent, but on Live experiences it is 28 per cent.”

Hemrajani also underlined that the Live Experience Industry needed more than one big player to bridge the demand gap.

“The issue is that the headroom is so large that no one person can do that. We are actually in its infancy. Also I think there is a lot more we need to do on the infrastructure side.”

Speaking about his success formula, Hemrajani added, “To be successful as an entrepreneur or as a business, you got to have humility and you have to believe that you are running a soccer team and not a cricket team. The difference and the subtle difference is that a cricket team is made of individual star performances, while in a soccer team it’s all cohesive and that is what we run.”