From KBC to Gandhi: Sameer Nair on Three Decades of Reinventing Indian Entertainment
Tune in for insights from one of the architects of India’s screen culture.
In this episode of The Media Room, Vanita Kohli-Khandekar sits down with Sameer Nair, CEO of Applause Entertainment and one of India’s most influential media executives. From shaping Indian television in the 2000s with Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kaun Banega Crorepati, to leading India’s streaming revolution with Scam 1992, Tanaav, and Gandhi, Nair reflects on three decades of transformation in entertainment. He explains why quality, not affordability, is the key to scaling India’s storytelling economy, and why “there is no bottom of the pyramid in entertainment.” The conversation spans the business of streaming, the evolution of storytelling formats, and the role of technology and AI in creative work. Nair opens up about Applause’s greenlighting philosophy — stories that start with an “audience of one” — and why attention, empathy, and curiosity remain the timeless principles of great storytelling. Tune in for insights from one of the architects of India’s screen culture.
NOTE: This transcript is done by a machine. Human eyes have gone through the script but there might still be errors in some of the text, so please refer to the audio in case you need to clarify any part. If you want to get in touch regarding any feedback, you can drop us a message on [email protected].
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TRANSCRIPT
Sameer Nair: So now actually in a funny way streaming has become the technology that can really give India a chance to become a global software with the content that we have that we make. India often tends to fall back on its you know sort of comfort zone that we have such a large domestic market. Netflix is the gold standard and what Netflix does it's like like how America is. If America sneezes the world catches a cold.
So in that sense Netflix is the gold standard and they are back to their winning ways so that's good. In the creative business especially you can't become 70% anybody who thinks I'm going to be a monopolistic player . That's not true. When streaming came along and all the ads were removed one fundamental thing it did was disrupt the rhythm of writing because now you're not writing to a break.
So I think attention span also is a function of attention right. It is about what you want to do when you want to do it and how you want to do it. I mean we have imagined AI before AI could be made right. We are actually waiting for science to catch up with us. So I don't see AI as any kind of threat, it's like a tool.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar (Host): Hello and welcome to the media room. Sameer Nair is the man most responsible for bringing Kaun Banega Crorepati and all the Saas Bahu serials to Indian TV screens. He was programming head for Star India and later its CEO.
At some point in 2007 he quit to set up Imagine with NDTV. He headed Balaji Telefilms before joining the Aditya Birla Group's Applause Entertainment in 2017. Applause has developed and showcased some of the most watched shows in India from Criminal Justice and Scam 1992 and Scam 2003, Office and most recently Black Warrant.
It also went on to showcase Gandhi's upcoming show at the Toronto International Film Festival recently. Applause has hit a size of about 150 crore but it also hits scale and variety in a business where it's very tough to scale up. That's the reason I sat down with Sameer recently to talk about everything from streaming, his green lighting process, AI and also his days at Star.
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Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Hi Sameer, welcome to the media room. Wonderful to have you.
Sameer Nair: Thank you so much.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: I think I've interviewed you in so many avatars over the last 20 odd years now. We met first on the sets of KBC.
Sameer Nair: Yes.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: I was just, you know, penning down my background. I said we met on the sets of KBC.
Sameer Nair: That's 25 years ago.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: That was 25 years ago. So Sameer, you've just come back from the Toronto International Film Festival. You all showcased I think two episodes of Gandhi there.
Will you tell us something a bit about that experience and why TIFF and what would it mean for the show?
Sameer Nair: Well we've been working on the show for the last three or four years and sometime around I think February or March we finished shooting. We're in post now and Hansal mentioned that you know that we should take the you know go to TIFF and show the first two episodes at a global platform. We are making a global show.
It is a show about the most famous Indian ever and the most famous person of the 20th century if you will and a global icon. So we thought yeah okay that's a good idea. So we actually applied to TIFF.
The way it works at TIFF is that you don't just land up there and show things. You have to apply and they have to select you. So that's what we did.
Hansal said let's do it and I said yeah okay cool. So we sent it and we applied and then we waited for two or three months because you have to wait and then we got the news that we'd been selected. So that was of course a big deal in our life because the first time an Indian series is being showcased at TIFF.
Before this they've done some international series. Normally they don't do series but they've done some international series in the past. It was the first time an Indian series has been released.
We were really excited about that.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: That was a movie. Yeah I know but it was your movie.
Sameer Nair: Yeah it was our movie. So that was two years ago. Hansal has been there twice before with I think Shahid and I think Aligarh and this was the first time that I was going though Zogato had gone a couple of years back.
So we went. It was really wonderful. See TIFF is a really prestigious international film festival.
It is one of the top fives globally you know of the big names. It's got a really eclectic crowd. It attracts a really interesting audience of people.
They're all cinephiles. Quite a welcoming and warm audience in that sense.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Yeah.
Sameer Nair: And really well put together. TIFF is clockwork efficiency, really slick, smooth, works really well, lots of activities, lots of things, lots of good minds basically. So yeah we are super excited.
We went there, we you know we dressed up and we did our little red carpet moment.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: What does it do for the show?
Sameer Nair: What it does actually for the show we want actually in all honesty for us going to TIFF was to be able to showcase it on a global platform to a new audience that has got no correlation with what we have done, what we are doing, nothing. You know it's not like a regular, it was not intended to be a platform screening. It was just a screening at a festival.
It attracts that kind of people, different types of people. The other thing was of course to put it on the map to get selected at TIFF was a big deal. So we were able to make a big noise about it.
There's so much conversation about now making India a global soft power, about you know putting India on the world stage, all of that which is why in many ways you know we think Gandhi fits the bill because that's why we set out to make it, to make a story that is you know which will resonate with a global audience not just an Indian audience and so we thought the best way to for the world to become aware of Gandhi and to see what we are doing is to start off at an international sympathetic and TIFF was the perfect place for us.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Is Gandhi a global show in that sense because of the character but did you set out to make a global show or is it because of character? Is it an Indian show or is it a show with a western gaze?
Sameer Nair: No no it's we Indians making it so it's an Indian show. In fact I would think that when Attenborough made his movie, Attenborough made a movie, he made it like almost 40 years ago now and at that time it was made in a particular way. He tried to fit the feature film format.
Funnily enough my father used to work in NFDT at the time when NFDT produced Gandhi.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Oh really?
Sameer Nair: So I've seen Gandhi in trial rooms in the Nehru Centre.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: I saw it in the theatre in '83.
Sameer Nair: So when we set out to make Gandhi our approach was a little different. We always knew that we were making a show for the world, not just an Indian show. We bought the rights to Guha's books.
In fact I signed Prateek before we signed Hansal. So Prateek was signed first then we announced it then Hansal called me and said how can you do this without me? So I said well come on board and we went on from there.
So the idea always has been that Gandhi as a character is obviously for us father of nation and all of that but he is also a global icon. It is a story of India that you know can be easily told to the rest of the world because it's a familiar name so it could travel well and also we wanted to tell a deeply personal story. So we are not telling the story of Gandhi the great.
We are actually telling the story of Mohan. That's sort of our big deal. So it's really a story about a human being who goes on to become the Mahatma or whatever.
It is not the Mahatma story. Attenborough's movie was very much the reverential lens to it. We don't have a reverential lens in that sense.
We have a more human lens. It's how we tell stories. We're telling the stories about human beings and their times and how it sort of works and operates.
We compared it in an earlier interview to you know like the crown or the crown told the story of the British monarchy over many decades. So in many ways this is a similar kind of a storytelling of many decades of the Indian independence movement centred around Gandhi. So yeah I mean and just you know somebody asked me that so is it similar.
So I said well it can't be similar because the crown is obviously the story of the rich and famous colonisers and this is the story of the colonised. So obviously it's different but that being said it's a very nice story. It's a very personal story.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: I really look forward to it. You know the reason I started with Gandhi is one of the things is we keep talking about streaming and you know everybody says this. I think Vivek Kuttu said it first that streaming offers us our KBC moment and it's a show you're familiar with.
That you know it gives us a window to the world. It is homogenised access to a great deal that makes access far easier. So India should be at the same level as Korea or something else.
But should we be targeting those markets? Should we be looking at those markets or should we be making shows? And everybody I speak to says we need to make shows for our market or films for our market and if it works it works.
But Gandhi is one such subject. For example if I took a black warrant. I mean criminal justice of course is a global show which you've seen.
But is it tough to take a show global? How tough is it? And the reason Gandhi looks very easy going global.
Sameer Nair: It's not easy actually. We don't ever make anything for a global audience. There's no such thing.
Nobody does it. Sweet Game was not made for a global audience. Money Heist was not made for a global audience.
Hard Cross was not made for a global audience. You always make a show for your own domestic market or your home country so to say. And then some shows break out.
Not all shows. So it's also a myth that America over the last hundred years has built this, you know, American soft power across the world. And not just in entertainment.
They've done it in fast food. They've done it in brands, in defence, in you name it. That's why they are the boss of the world.
You know imposing tariffs left right and centre doing all sorts of things. So they are the boss. So for India to become a global soft power it would require us to take our stories to the world.
What the streamer now allows is that it's made it easier to do that. Previously when we had to do that, if you made a movie and you wanted to take it abroad you had to find theatre change, you had to find markets, you had to do it as a process. TV was difficult.
So now actually in a funny way streaming has become the technology that can really give India a chance to become a global soft power with the content that we have that we make. In order to do that though what we need to do and we've always seen it every time is that we need to be telling stories, we need to be making content of a standard that matches the international quality. You know when we talk so much about the Koreans, they have taken that and really built it up.
The Americans you know a bad American film looks better than any other thing right because they make it at that scale and that quality standard. I think that's going to be an important challenge for India. India often tends to fall back on its you know sort of comfort zone that we have such a large domestic market and we have such a poor domestic market that we can make any old crap and it sort of flies here and becomes much success and applauded and then that becomes the standard.
But then what happens is that that cannot really go abroad, that can't really travel because you know it's of a certain quality. So I think that quality of storytelling, quality of writing, quality of production, just meeting those standards because on a streamer you are next to international content.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Give us a sense of where applause is right now within the broader M&E, media and entertainment ecosystem and also you mentioned Gandhi, what are the other shows? I mean Black Warrant was your big one this year.
Sameer Nair: Black Warrant happened, there was Criminal Justice season 5, 4 that happened, The Hunt happened on Sony.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Lovely show by the way.
Sameer Nair: It's really nice. So I mean where we're at is that we've been about eight years old now, we've produced I think over 60 shows, we made about four or five movies, we have done some documentaries which are going to hopefully be released now. So we've been creating content, running our business in this unique manner that we do with this applause hub and spoke model and you know a little bit first of our kind of situation and I think it's been good, it's been really good.
We've got a chance to produce a lot of variety, lots of different things. We do Tamil, we're doing Hindi obviously, we've done some very interesting collaborations. The larger market has seen the big boom, then saw the COVID sort of boom actually and then the sort of crunch after that and now it's sort of seeming to come back.
There have been mergers and consolidations, there's been a divorce that was to happen but a marriage that didn't happen, all of that. So all of these obviously caused little push and pull. A lot of the international players who were supposed to come here didn't come here, so they sort of you know didn't come back.
So the market's been through one little bit of a turbulent phase but I think things are settling down now. The Hollywood strikes are long over, you know things are settled. Netflix is back to its winning ways and since Netflix is the sort of gold standard for whatever happens with the streaming business.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Not Apple TV?
Sameer Nair: No, not Apple TV. Netflix is the gold standard and what Netflix does, it's like how America is, that if America sneezes the world catches a cold. So in that sense, Netflix is the gold standard and they are back to their winning ways.
So that's good and hopefully now everyone sort of gets energy. I see because the thing is that whatever said and done, TV is the last century's medium. So now while it's going through its motions and you know it's still a very live and vibrant kind of situation but it's declining.
It is moving on now. If TV did 200 million homes with an average of four people per home, 800 million people in India were reached with TV. I think the next time around when we reach a billion people, it'll be by streaming.
It'll be wired internet technology. I don't think TV has shrunk from its 200 million. So what happens is that what streaming now needs to do, if it is the technology of the future and if it is the current go-to, you know what everyone is doing.
Social media is growing that way, TikTok has grown that way, YouTube has grown that way. Everything is driven by internet connectivity. I think the streaming business really needs to now capitalize on the opportunity that's presented itself.
There are a billion Indians who are connected and who can be connected thanks to Jio and there is an opportunity to now entertain these billion Indians who have been fed on a very robust and energetic TV industry from the last 30 years. Who have seen the best quality television from across the world, not just Indian. You've seen news, sport, everything.
This is our audience that is ready, willing, able and pretty huge appetite. So this is the opportunity to do that. We've got to actually transition the entire TV business onto the streaming business.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You're talking about 125 million streaming subscribers. So we're talking roughly, let's say, a factor of three, 300-350 million audience. And if I take the TV universe as a parallel, we are talking the shrunk TV universe is closer to 650 million people.
Sameer Nair: Yeah, but that's what I'm saying, that the shrunk TV audience and the streaming audience can get to a billion consumers.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: We are one and a half billion people.
Sameer Nair: What will it take is to essentially provide great content to a large number of customers in different languages, different genres and different things to do.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Why is that push not happening Sam?
Sameer Nair: I would argue, I think it is happening. It is happening in different ways. For example, you take the IPL.
IPL is a prime example. IPL is the most popular viewed piece of content in India. It is the best possible quality of cricket that you can see.
It assembles the world's best in a circus that goes on for a month and a half. It is content creation at its possibly the highest quality.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: It's a gladiator of the modern age.
Sameer Nair: It's beautiful. And it's put out there to audiences. It may be free, maybe at some 29 rupee price or whatever.
And it gets huge viewership. I think at last count in the last IPL, there was something about some matches reaching 54 crore concurrent viewers. If Jio's number is to be taken at face value, it's incredible.
Now, why is that happening? Why are 54 crore people actually watching it? Because it is of that quality, because it is of that standard.
If you have to approach it and say India, the poor market, 1 billion Indians, let's show them the Dadar versus Matunga open. I don't think that's going to work. Nobody is going to watch.
Just because someone is poor, doesn't mean you give them crap. There is something known as self respect and dignity. And that is the basis of entertainment.
If you remember in the old days, we used to be in theatres, used to watch movies. So if you didn't have so much money, you bought lower stalls. If you had a little more money, you bought upper stalls, you went to the balcony, and the dress circle.
And then if you're the big man's friend, you're in the box. But everyone in the dark end audience is watching Amitabh Bachchan. Everyone in the audience is equally a fan.
Just because I bought a 10 rupee ticket doesn't make me any less of a fan. The people who hang around outside Mannat and Galaxy and Jalsa are people who are not the, it's not you and me, right? We are not the ones hanging around outside Mannat.
But the people who hang around Mannat should be able to go and see movies in theatres. They are the ones who drive these fandoms. What we are doing unwittingly in this business is that we are eliminating audiences.
We are eliminating stardom. We are eliminating fandom. We are eliminating moments of, you know, entertainment, exuberance.
We're trying to flatten it out. We're trying to follow some sort of...
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Do you think pricing is at fault or scale is not happening? I'm not getting that.
Sameer Nair: I think it's a combination. Pricing is that on the one hand, theatres are shutting because we are seeing that theatres are clamping down. It has been said famously that theatres are dead and therefore theatres are not required.
And now streaming is the solution to all else. But the thing is that if you think theatres are dead, then movies are dead, right? Because where are you going to show the movies?
Finally, when a movie like Pushpa or Arar gets made, they do a business of a thousand crores. Is any streamer going to pay a thousand crores for that movie? They can't and they shouldn't.
So you should therefore have multiple revenue streams, multiple avenues. How do you create stardom? You know, one thing that does while streaming is brilliant because you can watch it anytime, anywhere.
The reverse is that it removes that moment of a cultural moment. You have to have tonight at 9 for KBC. If you missed it, you didn't see it.
Now you can see it at 9.30. Now you can see it at 10.30. You can see it the next day. So these are different things that are going on. So I just think that this entertainment business is for India especially and if you look at the world, look at how Hollywood has created a global movement.
Look at how Koreans have done it. Look at how many people are doing it. We have a real opportunity to genuinely flex.
Genuinely flex, you know, after a hundred years of, you know, sort of essentially playing catch up. And, you know, like, you know, we were always.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Is this our moment in time?
Sameer Nair: It could be. Technology is allowing you to do that now. You know, technology is allowing you to do that.
I think the country has in a sense 20-25 years of liberalisation has also prospered. We've made even more progress. The current dispensation has such a sort of, you know, what should we say, buoyant and confident outlook.
I mean, recently there were waves, this whole thing about the orange economy and about making this sector of ours, right? This sector of ours, I think we have some 5-10 billion dollar sector currently.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: 29 billion.
Sameer Nair: 29 billion. The stated aim was that in the next 10 years, we should make it a 100 billion dollar sector. It is an entirely possible thing if you spend money to earn money.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: But Sameer, OK, now let me come back to the micro here for a minute. Applause. What is the, you know, you have this model where you don't do commission stuff.
You develop stuff from scratch and then you say, OK, now who wants this? I'll fix it. Now, that's a model which is totally different from what everybody else does.
Everybody does largely commission. Is that easier to scale up with that model? What kind of conflicts, pros or cons does it have, if I was to put it?
Sameer Nair: It's quite simple, actually. The pros and cons, not so much about pros and cons. It is the way we are working that we are actually doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
We are doing a lot of the research and development. We are doing all of that stuff and we're actually coming to you with the finished product. We're making your life easier as a platform because you just have to look at it and say yes or no.
It's a simple decision to take. So in a sense, we complement the business for everyone. What it does for us is obviously it creates risk because if I make something and you don't like it, then that's not so good.
And what the reward is that I get to retain IP. I get to retain control. I get some ease of working, those kinds of things.
So I don't think it's actually how movies were made all along, last hundred years. So we are not so different. We just happen to be making a series.
Otherwise, we are a movie studio. Now, what happens is that while we are doing and we are a small player. I mean, in the larger scheme of things, even if I make 20 shows a year, it will still be about six, seven percent of the market size.
Which is also the way it should be. I don't think in the creative business especially, you can't become 70 percent. Anybody thinks I'm going to be a monopolistic player.
That's not true. So I think from our scheme of things, we are responding to the market. So when the market was in a crunch scenario in the last two years, we crunched as well.
So we were really zooming in 22, 23, 24 was slower because people were buying less. People were doing less. All of that was happening.
And now as things are picking up, we are picking up again.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: That explains what I saw, the fall in revenues for applause over the last couple of years. It's a function of what's happening.
Sameer Nair: We can't do much. Like if like I think three players went away, two players merged and two did not get married. And so it's one little bit of a...
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Demand side has consolidated, supply side remains fragmented.
Sameer Nair: It remains. So it's just that. But that being said, I don't think that changes anything, because honestly, the real barometer of this business is whether we are going to get to that hundred billion industry size or not.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Something has to happen to scale it up.
Sameer Nair: Something will happen to scale it up. So either streaming technology will be already streaming technology and the opportunities are there. Hopefully, because see, either the phones itself will change, the connectivity will change, data will become...
See, India has already got really cheap data. So India has already got really cheap data. So I don't know whether data becoming cheaper is the solution.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: No, I don't think that. You know, and I see a lot of streaming guys, what I term it as is the linearisation of streaming I can see happening. A lot of ad supported programming is coming.
Netflix is in 12 markets with the ad deal. I think one fourth of all streaming revenues in the US now come from ad supported stuff. In India also, the growth is going to YouTube and Didi Friedrich.
You can't see a lot of growth in terms of audience numbers on the pay, this thing. And therefore, you're right, absolutely right, that some disruption has to happen somewhere. And that disruption cannot be only ad supported programming.
Sameer Nair: Yeah, I think see, and support is any case you want to do. Let me tell you, I'll give you an example from a content point of view. See, when we were doing TV, right, there was a way of writing for TV and TV, we used to write two ad breaks, right?
There was a rhythm. There's a rhythm in the writing. And you write a segment and the segment goes to what we used to call a segment high point.
Then you're going to ad break, then you come back from the ad break and continue from there. And then you go like that two, three segments and you come to the episodic high point. And then you come to a weekly high point, then whatever sequence you're following.
When streaming came along and all the ads were removed, one fundamental thing it did was disrupt the rhythm of writing, because now you're not writing to a break. When you're not writing to a break, you're writing in a different rhythm. Right.
It's quite basic, but it's quite profound. Now, what happens is that after spending 10 years or 15 years of doing streaming writing and writing everything in that manner, you come and say all of a sudden now we're going to have ad breaks. Right.
It requires retooling. It needs to be written. You can't, you can't insert ads.
Absolutely. When people say programmatic ad break, there's no such thing as programmatic ad break. TV had a very science to it.
There was a science to it. You wrote it at one point. You say like, oh, my God, you open it, Bhabhi, cut, that's the break.
You can't just put it anywhere and go on. So now even the rewriting of this material, creating of this material, the costing of all of this, you know, how much does content cost to make? What's the right price?
You know, like how much should it cost? So in the last seven, eight years, a lot of prices went skyrocketing because everyone, you know, the drunken sailors in Rome. So everyone paid a lot of money for things.
Now when everyone's cutting back. So currently it's a flux. But whatever it is, whatever is the right price and whatever is the right way, I think for India, especially the opportunity is to make really high quality content and make this distributed to the widest possible audience.
That's our opportunity. We cannot say that because we are, see for us now in any other business, I get it that the bottom of the pyramid is cheap and broke and therefore it's too bad. And so you make the sashay, I get it.
Any other business, consumer business, I get it. Absolutely. But in entertainment, there is no such thing as bottom of the pyramid and top of the pyramid.
The richest man in India and the poorest man in India are both Shah Rukh Khan fans. And that is a very basic thing. That's why cricket operates like that.
You cannot, you know, when Bumrah bowls, the richest man in India and the poorest man in India applaud Bumrah's bowling. A Bumrah rocker is a Bumrah.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Fantastic insight.
Sameer Nair: And it is really true. So there is no bottom of the pyramid.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: So the pyramid thing doesn't apply to this business.
Sameer Nair: It is a billion people, a billion and a half people, if you remove the edges out of it, a billion people and a billion people can be equally entertained. Right. The capacity to pay might be different, but they can be entertained equally.
And if you can create high quality content, which is affordable to all, right, which is affordable to all, some people pay more. How did TV work? When we were, by the time we got all the Tata skies and all of that stuff, I think our average payout used to be 500, 700 rupees a month.
The cable operator was still giving me the house next to my house at 150. And if that guy couldn't pay for one month, he wouldn't cut his cable. He said, let's adjust it next month.
So that rationalisation of price happened. That's why TV became so democratic. That's why it went everywhere.
Right. And that's what should be done. Because I think when KBC happened, it was not only the rich people watching KBC, everyone watched KBC.
Amitabh Bachchan was asking questions and answers to everyone.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: So interesting, you're saying this because you're telling me that streaming has democratised access, but it hasn't democratised pricing. If I have access, I can get access to any device, but I cannot afford it.
Sameer Nair: No, you cannot afford it. So therefore, it should be made affordable for you. That's one, which I think Jio Hotstar is doing.
They are making it affordable. Now, when it has become affordable, the question is, what am I watching now? If it's going to be a catch-up TV, then I'm anyway watching it on TV.
So why am I paying for two devices? If it is going to be, now also I've spent 25 years watching TV, I've spent 25 years seeing content. There's an aspirational level in everyone.
Right. So then everyone's life should improve. The quality of content should take you up, not dump you down.
So if that is the plan, then that's how it grows. If you shut down theatres and say, movies should become more cost effective and better, how will it be? You actually need that many more screens.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: 70% of revenues come from there.
Sameer Nair: Yeah. So I mean, like if India is now down to what, 9000 screens, we should be at 70,000 screens. And we have to find a way, we have to find a way, and it's got to be us.
Us, when I say us, it's not me or you, it is us as an industry and as a country that how do we get ease of doing business? How do we get single window clearance? How do we get all those things in place?
And how do we open screens in every possible way so that the retail revenue is out there? Everyone says that nobody goes to the theatre. If you go to half the places in India, they don't have a theatre.
If you open a theatre, they'll go and see a movie and have a 100 rupee ticket. Don't open a multiplex there and sell our money, shoes in wherever, you know, don't do that. So I think the opportunity is there.
And this is the market. And see, all the big guys are anyway doing retail. They're anyway doing retail.
So what does it take along with the retail store to have three screens? It takes nothing to do that. That is how you build and now even film distribution becomes so much easier because of digital distribution.
So in many ways, all the problems we had in the past, in the last century, distribution, technology, electricity, it's all gone. You know, we are in this new world. And I think the opportunity is there.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You know, I was saying, telling someone that this whole thing of ticket prices are too high. These are all secret market arguments. You reach 30,000 screens.
The same screens will come down to 100 rupees a ticket. There's a company called SVF Entertainment. You know them.
They saw their earnings dip. They said, boss, we need to be within Bengal. That's how they do largely Bengali content.
They are virtual. They started taking old screens. They have revived 53 screens.
Their box office has doubled. And they say, we've gone to places where theatres are completely shut down. So zero revenue, 25-30 lakhs.
That's how you're absolutely. I cannot agree with you.
Sameer Nair: And it has to be built that way because if you build it that way, then what happens is that you get more and more people into the fold. See, in many ways in 2000, if you remember, the number of TV, satellite TV homes was 25 million. So the number I remember because I made the presentations.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: To Rupert Murdoch as we remember.
Sameer Nair: And then we went from there. KBC happened, Kyonki happened. We really upped the game.
We took the content up by like 20x, 30x. You know, KBC was produced at that time at a crore an episode. A crore an episode to make a one hour show is absurd in 2000.
Kyonki Kahani very quickly went up into the 20s and 30 lakhs. So as we took that market up, we kept adding subscribers also, right?
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You were developing the market, you were expanding the market.
Sameer Nair: And as we were doing that, many, many people, you know, sort of got added into the net. The aim today should be that if the streaming universe is, suppose we say the streaming universe is approximately 150 million paying subs in whatever shape and form and say about 400 million free viewers who are just watching, we should take that and make that into 500 million paying subs. That should be the stated goal.
500 million paying subs and paying affordably, paying what you can afford. And you can have tiers, you can have this thing. There are so many ways.
That's how I said. Lower stall, upper stall, balcony, dress circle. You have your thing to do.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: So the thinking has to be to expand the market.
Sameer Nair: You have to expand the market.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Without that, there is no growth.
Sameer Nair: I'm saying we should get to 45-55 crore IPL viewers concurrently. We should get to that number. That is 550 million.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: We should get to that 150-200 million paying homes.
Sameer Nair: Yeah, we should get to that and then build from there, you know.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: One thing is when you're talking about storytelling, I'm going to come back to it. There's a deluge. I mean, you and I, we've grown up with the satellite TV ecosystem.
But there's a deluge and there's a deluge short form, long form, theatrical. And now there's a new entrant called micro drama. So time is splintered.
As a consumer, I think we are one of the most pampered consumers, probably, especially if you're in a metro, you're the one who's most pampered. But what is a challenge that means for storytellers, especially for storytellers like Applause or for anybody else in this ecosystem? Because the consumer doesn't think of you as an applause show or a fiction show or a long form.
The consumer is just scrolling, whether he's scrolling on his phone or whether he's surfing on his TV. What challenges does it bring for the storyteller and for a firm like Applause?
Sameer Nair: Yeah. Well, you know what? First of all, you know, a human being is a creature of moods.
So the way we see it is that all of us have our moods. There is a time for snacking. There's time for a meal, there's a time for comfort, there's a time for excitement, the time for, you know, a thrill.
There are different things happening. So when we are trying to tell stories, our sense is that in a way we are not competing. See, the human being, as you said, the human being does not care about whether this is an applause show or not an applause show.
I am doing what I am doing. If something interests me, I will give it its time.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Right.
Sameer Nair: So like people always say that, oh, attention spans have shrunk so much. And, you know, the younger generation today, eight seconds, they don't have time for anything. But I have a 17-year-old daughter who spends four hours talking to a friend on the phone.
I'm saying, what happened to the attention span? Like what are you at three in the morning? Something is going on.
When you're in love, you can be talking to your loved one for an extended period of time. You should get bored. You don't have attention span, you know, like you should, but you don't.
So I think attention span also is a function of attention. Right. It is about what you want to do, when you want to do it and how you want to do it.
And the good thing is that when we were younger, we had fewer options. Now people have more options. But even in that, people are still doing it.
You know, I mean, when you sit and watch a cricket match for three hours, there's three hours of much activity happening. What happened to the attention span then?
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Right.
Sameer Nair: So I think all of it coexists. What is happening is different formats are coming up. So I think movies will be movies.
You will still make movies. You will still have that experience. Series you make, dramas you make.
Now micro dramas have come. What is a micro drama? Micro drama actually is a scene.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Correct.
Sameer Nair: It's a collection of scenes. Right. But again, there's a science to it.
A lot of people are thinking, OK, we're making a daily soap. Let's cut it into 90 seconds and make it into a micro drama. That is not a micro drama.
A micro drama is a start, middle and end of a story in 90 seconds and then start, middle and end of a story. And it's written to that rhythm. You know, it's got to be written to a very specific rhythm, much like how we have to write TV.
So when that episode ends, you are forced to scroll. You're forced to go to the next one. Otherwise, you can't.
A micro drama doesn't work. It's not a...
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Sameer, we have so much talent and training in writing. I always think that you mentioned TV and the rhythm of moving to streaming. And now if streaming goes to ad-supported ones, again to micro dramas.
Do we have that body of talent? And is anybody spending on that kind of development or training? I always wonder about that.
Sameer Nair: See, I think, you know, that is a chicken and egg. So really, no one ever really, I mean, Korea has done it, but Korea is a small country and they did it in the manner they did it, as if it was a government sponsored effort to create what is called K-pop, K-drama, all of that. But otherwise in the rest of the world, what happens is that is driven by the quality of content.
So when you make better content, then the content creator and the distributor of the platform, they end up in hiring or getting better people to do it. So the quality improves in that sense. Like we make, like Indians in general have always made the best movies in Southeast Asia.
All of South Asia, we have been like apart from the US, we've been the greatest, most prolific filmmakers. Why is that? It is because we are making a big market and we make better films, you know, better, better people are doing it.
So I think in that sense, I think the quality of creators has improved a lot. There's lots of good people doing lots of good work. It is a question of having that collective goal.
We have to get to 70,000 screens. We have to get to a hundred billion dollar market. We have to become a global soft power.
We have to take our stories all over the world. It should reverberate. And in order to do that, we have to make better quality content.
We have to make it. And that automatically then results in, because see, newer generations keep coming, right? Everyone's going, studying, learning how to do it.
So like when in the earlier days, you could come from FTII or you were just a natural, right? Today, almost every second kid we hire has done some form of film and television studies. You know, there are lots of whistling woods there.
There are so many institutes everywhere. So many people are doing it. So I don't think the lack of skill or knowledge is a problem.
It's a question of how much resource you can put into it.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: There is a whole debate around and when you talk about scale, on using AI to scale up. Now, you can use AI in the process part of it, you know, whether it's workflows, dubbing, subbing, all of that. And there is a whole thing of AI in the creative process.
Where are you on that? What are your thoughts? And is there any conflict in your head on using AI on the creative side of it?
Sameer Nair: No, not at all. Actually, see, AI, you know, I think the entertainment industry has always been open to technology from the start. From the days of Buster Keaton doing physical gags for his movies, to Star Wars, to Interstellar.
I mean, we have imagined AI before AI could be made, right? We are actually waiting for science to catch up with us. You know, we've already been to the edge of a black hole and Christopher Nolan has told us what the black hole is.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Or the fifth dimension.
Sameer Nair: Yeah, we know, Tesseract and all, we know all that. Now, the question is, maybe the scientists can catch up with us. So I don't see AI as any kind of threat.
It's like a tool. You know, when Excel came along in 98, when Excel came along, I'll tell you, let me finish. When Excel came along, it helped you do mathematical calculations easier.
It revolutionised the whole finance industry.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Right.
Sameer Nair: The guy was to write and make accounts and the importance of remembering numbers and doing addition and subtraction suddenly changed overnight because you could just drag, drop and copy and you got your multiplication done. It was a tool. Now, the whole industry operates on that.
Nobody is going back and sitting and saying, we want to sit down and physically calculate anything. Similarly, now when it's arrived into our lives, there are many good things it's doing. And it's learning.
It's getting better with each time. There you see so many AI generated videos now, right, that they're trying to get to a lifelike situation. It's taking time because they can't get lip sync right, you can't get finger movement right.
There are lots of problems. And but even after all of that is done, assuming it becomes, I was speaking to at one of the these AI conferences, so the person was saying that, oh, you know, this AI is, you know, we've created these wonderful tools and we are going to democratise it and it's going to be available to all. So then how do you think it is going to affect creators like y'all?
So I said, well, I don't know what's there, what's there, you know, because at the end of the day, while all AI might be equal, all creators are not. That's like saying that just because there are paints and brushes, everyone is a painter. They're not a painter.
So that means then AI then becomes a tool. So if there are these wonderful tools available, I think better creators will be better, even better creators. It will make us supermen out of us.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: No, totally with you on that. But there is this whole thing of training AI on copyrighted material, especially generated AI. And that is, I think that is the thing which, whether it's the newspaper business, whether it is writers, whether it is filmmakers, I think that's the thing that is worrying because you are used, so somebody told me I can train AI to write like Salman Rushdie or Ian McEwan.
And I'm like, then why should they be creating original stuff in the first place? So there is a complete denial of the fact that copyrighted material is being used to train generative AI. And that is probably where I'm coming from.
Sameer Nair: See, the thing is that we find ourselves in a place now where by the time the issue is being raised, the horses have bolted a long time back. If you think about the Internet in general and therefore Internet search, it is based on piracy. Right?
If you go searching for something, have they taken your permission to find you? They haven't. They haven't.
If I go and search for Vanita Kohli, I will find something about you. Have they taken your permission? No, it is available.
It's what we call public domain. This is all the stuff that's available there. And when the Internet first came along, we all welcomed it.
We were all happy. We were happy that, wow, what a brilliant, miraculous invention this is and I can find this and I can find that. And over the last 30 years, the Internet has collected a lot of information.
All the tech companies now working with each other, combining all this info, all of this stuff, all the social media, everything is all there. Now, when all the books have been uploaded, we were rejoicing when Kindle came along. No one objected to that.
Everyone was happy. They said, oh, it's all there. Half the time when you say, hey, I've got a beautiful book, buy it.
Before I can recommend the name, somebody sends me a PDF of the book on WhatsApp saying, why bother buying it? Here's a ripped off copy of the book. Right.
It's happening. So now when all of that is happening, all of this is available. This is one more layer to our great progress.
When you say that, listen, I can give you a, write a book like Salman Rushdie. So now there's a lot of dispute about this and there will be litigation. Like a lot of actors are in any way taking action, saying you can't do imitations, which is rightfully so.
I'm saying if you want to do an imitation of Amitabh Bachchan or Shahrukh Khan, you should pay them. Pay them and do this. That way they won't have to come to shoot.
You can make your movie. They get their money. Everyone's happy.
Right. So it can be done. So I mean, these are real problems.
But these real problems have existed and they will, I think Google is trying to now present their new model where they say that all the AI that you use, their tools are copyright cleared. So that's the promise that you can use any music, any of this, any of that is copyright cleared, which means they paid for it. That makes them obviously the most expensive of the service.
But that's a method. And I think things will find their way. I mean, water finds its level in these things.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: What attracts you to a show or a piece of programme? What's your greenlighting process of thinking or philosophy? Is there an applause way or is it just organic?
Sameer Nair: No, I think, I mean, it's not, see, I think we do a lot of, I do a lot of watching and listening in any case. So I'm anyway seeing everything that's being made, seeing what people are doing. We listen to a lot of social signals.
We talk to a lot of platforms. So we in general have a good sense of what people are watching, what they're doing, why they're doing it. Then the next thing that comes is that when we hear an idea, it should grab us first because it starts with an audience of one.
So when somebody tells us an idea, if I read a book, I must like it first. And if I like it, then I might want to make it and tell more people about it. So the idea is that because that's how ideas propagate.
I tell you something, you tell more people and it goes from there. So the selection of an idea that we ought to make, ought to make that, must pass that first filter that, you know, like, oh, this is so interesting, we must, you know, sort of aware the audience, see it in palette, in that sense. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we are very good filters.
I am in fact a very good filter because I read all sorts of things. I see all sorts of things and I'm drawn to everything. And then also what happens is the creative process is such that it's not that from idea to screen happens instantaneously.
There are lots of moving parts and lots of people involved. So even if I like an idea, I'll go and tell five colleagues of mine, hey, this is a great idea. Let's do it.
The next step would be to try and flesh it out. It could fail there. The next step would be to write it out.
It could fail there. The next step would be to try and cast it. It could fail there.
Let's try and budget it. It could fail there. Finally let's go and pitch it to a platform and see if anyone else likes it.
It could fail there. There are many processes. There are many points of failure.
So ideas don't just like I thought about it and let's make it. It's not like that. There are many moving ones.
And also ideas have this shape-shifting ability. So you start out with something. Like when we were making Gandhi, we bought Ram Guha's books.
They are the most definitive biographies of Mahatma Gandhi. He is the most respected historian of Gandhi. Bought the books, read the books, big thick tomes, read the books.
Our process then became we were looking to find Mohan in the book. So that's our process now. So we have taken the books.
Everything is there in it. Now we are looking to find Mohan. Now when we finally write one screenplay, Pratik Gandhi acts in it.
Hansal Mehta directs it. And it became a real fly on the wall of a Gujarati household in 1888. Now that's considerably different from where we started out.
Now suddenly to a squabbling brothers in a Gujarati household in 1888. That's where we've reached. And now you get that sense of that time.
And that is coming alive. So that is storytelling.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: That I found even in Scam 92 or Scam 2003.
Sameer Nair: Look at Black Warrant. Look at Hunt. You've not seen Hunt yet.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You must watch Hunt.
Sameer Nair: I've seen Hunt.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Rajiv Gandhi assassin. I saw Hunt.
Sameer Nair: I love to say that about Hunt that we spent a lot of money so that you could see the dark, hot, humid.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: It's such an 80s look.
Sameer Nair: We spent a lot of money to get that dark, hot, humid Chennai. That look ke liye itna kuch karna pada. Because it's going to come alive.
So that's how it works. So our approach to storytelling is obviously there must be some reason to tell this story. Why should people hear it?
You know, like there's a thing about, you know, that I have a story to tell. But the more important thing is that you need story listeners. We are all great storytellers, but somebody's got to listen.
And if you don't get a large number of people to listen to your story, then you're not successful. So I think that and it takes a process. And we make mistakes.
We make a lot of mistakes.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Sameer Nair of 2000 who, or even of the 90s, who did those intersrels on TV. And of 2000 who greenlit or who put KBC together, I think from scratch, you know, from thinking of Siddharth Basu and Amitabh Bachchan. And you stuck to your guns.
You got Amitabh, spent three months and got him. To Kyunki and getting Ekta on board. And you're the guy who got India addicted to daily soap.
So we blame you for the idiot box that television became. To the Sameer Nair of now, who's done Zogato, Gandhi, Scam, Crypto. Who's the man who's greenlit?
What is, if I look, you know, you've been a part of this continuum in India's journey, India's discovery of entertainment on screen. Are there like two, three things which stand out in your head, whether it is on the creative side, on the business side? What is Sameer Nair from then to now?
How is he different?
Sameer Nair: I don't know. I don't know what is different. I don't know what's different.
Maybe more grown up, more mature. I mean, I made more mistakes. So I've learnt more.
Maybe I've become a little cooler and calmer about things. I also know so many more things that I can possibly approach it differently. But I think as far as creativity, the business of creativity and storytelling go, I think a lot of first principles I have found keep reappearing and keep getting reapplied.
Like I remember, you know, when we used to do interstitial programming on star movies and I've interviewed so many people, I've interviewed Amitabh Bachchan, I've interviewed filmmakers, I met Shah Rukh Khan on the blind school terrace at Worli for a movie called Chahat. So it's pretty obscure. So even from that time, there was like one simple thing, an old Bollywood trope used to be that what is the moral of the story?
It's such a simple thing, right? What's the moral of the story? Now, why are you telling me the story and what's the moral of the story?
Many people seem to have forgotten that. When you finally finish seeing something, you say, okay, what's the moral of the story? There is no moral.
Because when an audience is leaving, completely finishing something, what's that one thing that you've left me with? What's the feeling that I want you to have? Like again, when we make movies, when we make shows, it is about me saying I'm inviting you into my world.
I'm asking you to immerse yourself into my world. Commit so much time to me. So how am I doing it?
How am I going to be telling this story? Even when we did reality television, when we made Laughter Challenge, when we did even a Coffee with Karan. Coffee with Karan was so distinctive to Randevu with Simi Garewa.
We were anyway doing Randevu with Simi Garewa. So Coffee with Karan was really that, okay, she does her thing, you come and do your thing. You come and bring your friends in your chat.
It became an iconic show. It's still going on. It started from that thought that just bring your pals.
And don't be Simi. So you don't do what she does. Because she does a more definitive Barbara Walters kind of thing.
So I think all of these ideas, all of these things that come up, always come up, even the stuff we are doing now, Scam, Black Water, and even if you take Gandhi, it comes on this thing about, I think it's important. I think it's important to do contemporary history. I think we should know more about ourselves because the more we know about ourselves, the better it is.
So we do that. So I think the good thing for me has been that I have remained this sort of learner. And whatever I've learned, thankfully, I haven't forgotten.
So I remember, I remember the errors and the missteps and things like that.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You know, you told me once that you're like this, if a creative business is being a producer or whatever is or the head of this company, it's like being a potter. You have to keep your hand on the clay.
Sameer Nair: Otherwise, it's all the sleeves rolled up and hands in the mud. And you know, and you got to keep it because the minute you take your hands off, it's gone. I cannot tell you how optimistic I am about the future.
I think at the point where we are right now, it's truly it's in that moment. The thing is, there's so many other things going on that we sometimes get distracted because, you know, there's business and there's politics and there's geopolitics and all that drama going on. But the fact of the matter is that we can't take the storytelling out of our lives.
Right. We can't take that. So people have to be entertained.
People have to be informed. People have to be if they are suddenly taken away, if you switch off the internet today, I think we'll have a revolution.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: What happened in Nepal?
Sameer Nair: Yeah, I mean, I think we'll have a revolution. And if you suddenly say, okay, let us all become sanskari and stop and start praying or something, I think we'll have a problem. So I think that's the opportunity that we can tell so many, we can do so many things better.
You know what we couldn't do before we can do now. And that's what we should do. We should all do that.
I'm super, super shocked about all that.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Fantastic. So on that optimistic note, thank you so much Sameer for your patience. Because I think I'm just asking what I feel like asking.
I don't think I've gone through my question thoroughly, but I'm just asking you. Thank you so much for being with us.
Sameer Nair: Thank you so much.
