Essel's Living Entertainment eyes Rs 130 cr revenue in 12 months 

Of this, Rs 50 crore is expected from the Indian market. Subhash Chandra expects the cognitive factual entertainment space to generate global business of Rs 1,000 crore in four to five years

Mayur Lookhar | Mumbai | September 7, 2015

Subhash Chandra-promoted Essel Vision Production last week announced a slew of new channels under its Living Entertainment network. The first of these channels – Living Foodz – is slated to go on air on September 11, 2015. Living Entertainment will roll out three other channels – Living Rootz, Living Homez, and Living Travelz over the course of the next 12-18 months.

Piyush Sharma

With the launch of Living Foodz, Zee Khana Khazana, the primary food channel that was launched by Zee Entertainment Enterprises in 2010, will come to an end. When asked whether Zee Khana Khazana would be integrated into the Living brand, Piyush Sharma, CEO, Zee Living - India APAC, said, “Zee Khana Khazana will cease to exist, effective September 11, and Living Foodz will be an independent new channel that comes into being on that day.”

Subhash Chandra

Subhash Chandra, Chairman, Zee, described the food and lifestyle market as cognitive factual entertainment space, which globally accounts for 10-12 per cent of TV consumption, generating 18-20 per cent of the revenues. He pegged the total market value of the cognitive factual entertainment space globally at Rs 1.5 lakh crore.

Chandra described Living Foodz as a liberating movement in food and clarified that Living network of channels were completely independent and did not come under the Zee network.

Living Foodz will have 12 hours of fresh programming in the first week, with 75-90 per cent content coming from the Indian stable, while the rest will be international content. The channel will be launched in 25 countries within a year.

Some of the prime time shows on Living Foodz include 'Food Xpress: Rocky and Mayur', 'Chef on Wheels', 'Vickypedia', 'The Great Indian Rasoi', 'Pickle Nation', 'Good Food America' and 'Peggy's Kitchen Cures'.

Throwing more light on the programming, Sharma said, “As far as the TV channel is concerned, we will have 100 per cent fresh content. However, as far as digital is concerned, where we already have over 5,000 recipes, we will be repackaging that content to create engagement across various social and digital platforms.”

Amit Nair

“We may look at doing separate content for digital. It could be shorter versions of the TV shows or it could be a fresh content that we are shooting essentially from a recipe point of view,” said Living Foodz Business Head Amit Nair.

Living Entertainment will launch the digital portal, LivingFoodz.com, in two months' time, while the mobile app will be unveiled six months from now.

Elaborating on the revenue model for Living Foodz, Sharma said, “In the case of India as far the linear television aspect of the product is concerned, it will be both advertising and subscription revenues. But since we are looking to create a brand-filtered, multi-platform offering, there will be independent revenue streams as well as independent revenue investments that will be required on the digital side. We will also invest in activation, where we have definitive plans to create large-scale formats in the country.”

Food and lifestyle has always been a niche genre, and post-digitisation, the domain has only seen a further dip. When asked how bullish the network was on venturing into this niche space, Sharma replied, “There is a very clear trend of moving towards niche and specialised offering across all the mediums. We do believe that television is a mass medium and, therefore, it needs to be connecting at several levels. We are, of course, extremely bullish. Food is a category which is almost at inflection point. There's so much happening with food, with lots of experimentation. Hence, with the right offering, it is a category that could generate millions.”

When asked what is ailing the food and lifestyle genre in India, Nair said, “I don't think there is anything wrong with it, but food has to be seen in a new light. Even though everybody loves food, people may not necessarily look at cookery shows all the time. They would like to experience food in a different manner, getting out and experiencing food. That was something that was missing from the entire food scene as such. This is a gap that we will fill by telling interesting stories with our chefs. So, essentially from a cooking point of view we are moving towards an 'everyone who loves to eat' sort of scenario.”

Meanwhile, Punit Goenka, MD and CEO, Zee, is confident enough to expect Living Foodz to break even in the first year of its operations.

Living Entertainment is expected to generate Rs 80 crore from the international markets and Rs 50 crore from the Indian market, thereby, fetching a total Rs 120 crore revenue in 12 months' time. Subhash Chandra stated that he expected the cognitive, factual entertainment space to generate global business of Rs 1,000 crore in four to five years.

Speaking on the time band, Nair said, “We've divided the programming into two parts. The afternoon time band is called 'Gourmet Time' and this is essentially where we will be focusing on the cooking related shows because that forms a very significant part of a food channel. The evening band is called 'Sundown Special', which will have a mix of lifestyle and a little bit of food-based programmes.”

Priced at Rs 30, Living Foodz will be available across major direct-to-home (DTH) platforms and other digital cable platforms.

Living Entertainment has pumped in Rs 15 crore for marketing and promotions of the channel. As reported earlier, Scarecrow Communications has been roped in as the creative agency for Living Foodz, while Helios Media will be providing advertisement revenue.

Speaking about the marketing efforts, Nair said, “Most of the promotion is TV-centric. We started our campaign from September 4 across our network channels, other lifestyle channels and other networks which have similar audiences. It is quite an exhaustive list, but mostly focussed on music, entertainment, news and obviously lifestyle channels.”

He further said, “This will be hugely supported by digital as it is a key aspect for social engagement. The outdoor campaign will be rolled out in a couple of days. For our radio campaign, we have a very catchy tune composed by Sneha Khanwalkar. We are also looking at launching a print campaign.”

Though Nair refused to divulge the names of the channel sponsors, he informed, “Helios Media is our agency that will be doing the revenue partners. They have already signed on 4-5 sponsors, either as channel partners or advertisers. So, it's already a great start. The names would be revealed on September 11.”

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