Hi, this is Rajat from Startup Frat. Today I wanna share with you a story. This is the story of the media industry or the cinema industry. Back in the old days 200 – 300 years back. What used to happen was? Small natak companies or small in the US like mine companies in India were called the Natak Company or whatever or it is. Natak company (Drama company) goes from village to village every two to three weeks and they would have a showing of a particular play for 3 nights a week or 1 week for 3 nights per week or two weeks. And then people would actually go and pay and actually watch the natak. In those times basically, the people who could actually pay money to watch natak, you know only the upper-middle class or the Richard people because everybody did not have that kind of money for entertainment.
Then maybe the poor people would be sitting on the outskirts just watching from a distance because they could not pay money to get inside the arena. There was no arena, it was just a field and they would setup like this little stage with some curtains and then they would have the natak in there. So, the rich people are buying and the people who were doing the natak were typically either migratory kind of people like gypsies or something or they would be you know people are not very you know that’s why they got a follow lifestyle where they literally live on the road. The whole natak company with his 5 – 10 actors would actually go from town to town to town and 2- 6 months or 9 months of this stuff. Much like the rock bands of later years.
So, that’s how they would do this stuff. They were the poor people and the people who had actually afforded to watch were the rich people. Now what happened over a period of time was cinema halls came in. So, you could actually record natak and then take that fill and literally play in different different theatres. So over a period of time whoever had the rights to that film, Whoever own that film, the producer of the film, or if there were certain actors who had that and of brand value, they over a period of time got richer and richer. If you look at some of the interviews of old Bollywood actors, back in Dilip Kumar’s time and all of these you will realize that they were not really very rich at that time but they were much better off than the natak companies. So, you’ll never hear them saying I am and I was driving all the beautiful cars and all that because in those times distribution had not reached a scale that it later reached later years you know during Rajesh Khanna time or something like that.
What happened was these people were better off they could live in Bombay which is very good and then they got their roles in the movie. There were supposed to be no great shakes at that time. But over a period of time as theatre started getting built all over the place and more and more people started getting the access they became more famous over time. Then came you know the nationwide distribution through PVR through INOX and things like that. You know the Anil Ambani company and all that. All of the nation by a distribution which means if you produced a movie, the unit would get nationwide distribution and the producers could really get very rich and especially the actors started getting a little bit stake in the movies just to put their brand on it and then over a period of time the smarter actors they started producing their own movies.
So, they had access to all of this distribution network all over the country, and whoever owned the product that was being distributed you know they would get very rich. The smartest of these actors actually started their own production and distribution companies so what they could do they could actually be produced some movie create a movie that would start and it themselves they didn’t have to pay anybody else. Then they would go ahead and distribute you know the whole thing in there you know in their span of control. While also tying up with the big National level company like PVR like you know Anil Ambani company and all of that. Basically, have nature invite distribution.
Rows of red seats in a theater
The smartest of them said hey we have the huge Indian diaspora that lives in the middle east we have this huge Indian diaspora that lives in the US we have this huge you know we have we could have demand for Indian movies lets in China because you know Chinese were consuming entertainment at that time a lot. And they had their own types of movies, but if you release a Bollywood movie over there with all kinds of action and kinds of song and dance in all of that requires like a new thing for them. So, you know we got a lot of distribution in China. The smartest of these people you know are people like Aamir Khan and you know people like Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan, people who had more control over their own distribution. They became hundreds of crorepatis. Fast forward to today, if you see the average person who goes to a theatre maybe they are not even upper middle class not all of them. Very well done a lot of them were literally like students they have no money a lot of them are actually lower middle class but you know they just need the entertainment so they go and watch a movie even though they may not be able to afford the 150 bucks ticket all the time.
So you see the mixed crowd inside the theatre. At any level regardless of their middle-class rich people poor people whatever all-inclusive. Who is the richest of them all is the person on the screen the “Natak Wala”. Natak wala becomes richer and richer and richer to a point that they are now worth 100 crore Rupees. Did you know, In fact they pay like 40 50 crore rupees in income taxes? So you can just imagine the amount of scale that they have. The best part of the worst part is if you compare the quality of these movies with actual Hollywood-level movies. The quad is mediocre at best, That’s what I would like to say. Mediocre, you see some of these movies the graphic editing is terrible as compared to Hollywood movie. The storyline is literally non-existent as compared to any Hollywood movie.
Real creativity is, I would like to say again this is my personal opinion and I don’t wanna bit anyone down. But we are not the best product in the market. Some of these people are among the richest people in that industry globally there are richer than the Americans Starts and all of that. Why is that so that brings me to the billion-dollar secret, my friend? The billion-dollar secret is your product doesn’t need to be like the best you don’t need to focus on the product to the point that it becomes the best and basically you know just a waste of time doing that. Your product needs to be good enough to be in the market. And then what you need to do my friend is the distribution you need to focus on distribution. You need to get to as many people as possible as fast as possible that you got a focus on. Now imagine if we add a little product and instead of going through the entire sales process manually and figuring out your best customers and pandering to them and negotiating with on the rates and dealing with all the customer issues etc.
Assuming the product by self is good or not the best but good. So there should be no customer issues but sometimes when customers know, they can wound their little finger, they probably will. What if you could bypass this whole thing or short circuit this learning process and get to the global level distribution today. With your product marketing, services, or whatever it is. Chances are whoever plays this game most efficiently today will be the Aamir khan of tomorrow.
You know in whatever Industry you are in that is the billion-dollar secret. Distribution my friend is the billion-dollar secret. Now in the old day, people who did not even produce products became the biggest companies on the planet. People like Walmart didn’t produce anything on their own. They just make sure they built the biggest distribution channel here on planet earth. Today it is Amazon even in the movie business you know you have the movie distributors and all of that. So, people who invest in distribution, grow bigger than the people who create the best possible product.
If you have your own product and you build your own distribution you will be absolutely unbeatable in the market of tomorrow my friend. That is the billion-dollar secret. If this interests you and you would like to know more about it. What I would like to do is, I would like to go to startupfrat.club/live. I am having a live session where I am teaching people how this can be done in different different industries and how we have been able to do this so the past 6 to 8 months and literally every possible industry you can hear of. In travel in hospitality, food in art in logistics in creative work. If you have a nice idea to have a passion or if you have a product that needs to be taken to the market in a big way. how do you can re-engineer this whole process? and do it for yourself and how you can be the dominant force in your market of tomorrow? ok so if this interests you hit that link and come and see my life bye-bye.