Bollywood, Startups & IT Industry

As I read yet another article from a Bollywood director regarding the failure of recently released movies; I was compelled to pen my thoughts on this subject. Everyday, we are seeing someone from the movie industry coming out and pretty much blaming the audience for not going to the theatre to watch their movies. Multiple articles / tweets / quotes I have read so far harp on the fact that hundreds of people put hard-work in making a movie and when the audience turns their back on the movie; we are hurting them all. 

I am not going to delve too much into the whole “Boycott Trend” here because that’s probably just a convenient excuse for Bollywood. If we have to sum up the recent and repeated failures of the movies at theatres, I would sum it up as follows – 

This article however focuses on the “Killing the hen that lays golden eggs” that is severely impacting three key industries that may have long lasting impact on the Indian economy & job prospects. The Indian IT/ITeS industry, the “Startup ecosystem” and now Bollywood all are the victims of the same principle – The industries have focused for far too long on short term gains at the cost of longevity of the sector / industry. 

In case of Bollywood, the leading stars are charging close to a cool Hundred Crore per movie. 99.99% of India will probably not make such amounts of money in a hundred lifetimes. This puts unrealistic pressure on the producers / distributors – who then are forced to jack up the ticket prices to astronomical levels and try to earn as much as they can in the first weekend (before the word of mouth spreads). It is evident that it is not working anymore. 

As far as the IT/ITeS industry is concerned, the 100% - 200% hikes doled out to engineers when they switch jobs are driving up project costs to levels that are forcing the American and European clients to rethink their “outsourcing” strategies. The cost arbitrage is drying up & while we are moving up the value chain; it is obviously a much smaller section of the pyramid. Not everyone can be accommodated there. We have already started seeing the impact of such initiatives from large IT companies. 

And in the case of the ‘startups’; customer acquisition at any cost with complete disregard for literally common-sense business principles is behind many catastrophic failures we are seeing around us. This of course requires detailed writeup. After-all , that's the sector that I care most deeply about :-) 

Very easy and common-sense steps can course-correct all the three industries in a very short span of time. Every person working in these industries needs to understand that unless adjustments are made, the very foundations of these industries will very quickly erode. The superstars of Bollywood should carry the same risks that producers and distributors carry (Profit share v/s large up-front fees); completely unrealistic hikes in the IT industry should taper off and the startups must focus on per-unit economics. If you can't earn profits, at least don't spend $4 to earn a dollar. 

Till that happens, we will keep reading about the doomsday scenario for Bollywood & other industries. 

And before concluding, one humble request to the Bollywood actors and directors – Just like a lot of regular people suffer when a movie fails; millions of workers have suffered throughout the history when a factory shuts down or a company fails. You are no different than other businesses so please spare us the emotional blackmail. If you make good movies; we, the audience will automatically come back to the theatres (Boycott hashtags notwithstanding)