Esha Media Research: How R S Iyer made it into a Rs
22 crore news monitoring agency
My entrepreneurial journey began purely by chance,
when I happened to accompany two of my friends to
their meetings in 1998. It led me to stumble upon
my business idea, which has translated into India's
premier, full-fledged news monitoring agency, Esha
Media Research.
Before 1998, I had no inclination or intention to
start my own venture. I belong to a Mumbai-based,
middle-class family, which places great stock on a
good job. So, after completing my education in 1987
—an electronics engineering degree, followed by a
two-year management course, both from Mumbai—I
bagged a job at a local electronic service centre.
I quickly became bored with it, and three months
later, I took up marketing-related jobs for
multinational companies, where I worked for the
next 11 years. It was while I was with Videk, an IT
solutions provider, that a friend asked me to
accompany him to a company that was liquidating its
assets. It had been involved in commercial spot
monitoring, which means checking if a particular
advertisement was shown at the allocated time slot
on a given channel.
Since it was shutting down, its video recorders were
on offer at dirt cheap rates. The next day, I
accompanied yet another friend to the Doordarshan
centre at Worli, Mumbai. In those days, there was no
concept of 24-hour news channels. Even the news
on Doordarshan was restricted to fixed time slots,
and several production houses would book their
segments to showcase their programmes.
In September 1998, a new 10-minute business
segment, Business Plus, was introduced on
Doordarshan. My friend and I learnt that the
producers of the show were looking for someone to
record the programme on VHS tapes—a third party
could recording for free, but could charge others
for copies of the bulletin.
I decided to take on the challenge and immediately
bought the used video recorders that were on sale,
deploying my entire savings and picking up two for
Rs 5,000 each. I quit my job the following day and
began recording Business Plus at my Chembur home.
I called my venture Esha News Monitoring Services
Private Limited.
Nothing happened for the first few days, but I
continued recording the data. Finally, five days later,
I got a call from a press relations agency, asking if I
could provide a clipping of a particular news item
that had been aired on the first day of my setting up
shop. I delivered the VHS tape to the customer,
charging nearly Rs 350 for it. This included the cost
of the tape, which was around Rs 100.
Before the end of the first month, I notched up 30
more transactions. I became more proactive about
generating business, starting by familiarising myself
with the client list of some of the PR agencies I was
dealing with. I began reaching out to them,
suggesting news interviews that might be of interest
to them. My network began to grow rapidly and I
could no longer manage it alone.
By December 1998, I had hired two people to record
the news programme, edit the tapes and log the
data, and another person to make deliveries to
clients. The booming business prompted us to shift
into our first office—a leased 250 sq ft garage at
Chembur— in February 1999. By this time, more
news segments had started airing, so I bought more
video recorders and TV sets to expand the business.
In the first year of operations, we posted a turnover
of Rs 50,000. The next important year was 2000,
when new channels like Zee TV launched in India.
This gave Esha a shot in the arm and prompted us to
computerise our operations. My friends from the
Videk days developed a software program to keep
track of the data, which was a blessing because the
basic Excel sheets could not handle the data load. In
2004, we shifted to a 3,500 sq ft leased space at
Chembur. During this period, we also started phasing
out the VHS system due to problems with video
recorders. The tapes would have fungus growth and
could not be reused. Besides, a lot of space was
needed to store the tapes and machines, both of
which were becoming obsolete. So we began to
adopt the CD/VCD infrastructure. In the past 13
years, we have invested `7 crore in developing
systems and purchasing the latest computers, servers
and editing machines.
In 2012, we went in for a reverse merger with a
Hyderabad-based print ink manufacturing company,
Laser Dot. As the firm was in the red, we took over
its liabilities and paid debts worth Rs 3 crore.
Eventually, we got listed on the BSE as Esha Media
Research Limited. Today, we track nearly 140
channels covering news, sports and entertainment,
but 60 per centof our business comes from the
business channels.
We have 500 corporate clients, including HDFC Bank
and Reliance Industries, as well as 125 PR agencies,
besides 2,000 individual customers. We also help the
police and Vigilance Department by providing them
data free of cost. Our 110-employee firm now plans
to launch products to push up the current turnover
of Rs 22 crore by 300 per cent. We intend to enter
segments like print and social media, as well as
research reports and the rating business.
(As told to Amit Shanbaug)
Esha Media Research: How R S Iyer made it into a Rs 22 crore news monitoring agency - The Economic Times on Mobile