Dhoom Machaao Dhoom is hardly your regular Disney show. This Hindi soap is about a bunch of schoolgirls trying to set up its own band and the problems thereof. There is jealousy, rivalry and there is triumph. It is, according to one Mumbai-based teenager, “the saas-bahu equivalent of teenage troubles”. Going by viewership numbers, Dhoom is popular. Watching it is also a good beginning if you want to figure out why there is a spring in the step of the most famous mouse on earth.
In its second attempt to capture the Indian market, Disney is now trying to make up for lost time. It first entered the Indian market 14 years ago in a failed joint venture with the Modis. Now, it seems, the $34.3-billion (Rs 1,40,630 crore) US-based The Walt Disney Company, the creators of the iconic Mickey Mouse, has finally got its chance.

This time round, courtesy a slew of initiatives, Disney looks likely to make it in the long haul. Within two years of coming in on its own, Disney has set up two channels and bought one (Hungama from UTV). It has initiated local programming (the first time outside the US), launched a kids magazine, 250 book titles, licensed its characters to 100 different product categories, syndicated content (successfully) on mobile phones among dozens of other things. Dhoom... is Disney’s attempt to go local, cut across the age barrier and connect with a larger audience, across platforms. “The idea is to play a bigger game — kids and families (not just kids),” says Rajat Jain, managing director of the Mumbai-based Walt Disney Company India. (Jain, who has put in papers at Disney and is in the handover phase, spoke to BW in a telephonic interview from Mumbai. For now, Andy Bird, president, Walt Disney International, will operate as the head of the India business).

Still, much of this action has not resulted in revenues anywhere close to those of rivals in India. Although the company was unwilling to share its figures, industry estimates put its 2006 India revenues from advertising at roughly Rs 30 crore. This does not include revenues from subscription, consumer products and mobile licensing for which there are no estimates available. However, what Disney has achieved, unarguably, is to grab a larger share of the kids television viewing, dominated by Cartoon Network, a part of the Turner India International bouquet.

That brings us to the nub of the issue. Turner is a part of Disney’s global rival, the $44.22-billion (Rs 1,81,302 crore) Time Warner Inc. Almost all of Disney’s peers among the top 10 global media majors — Viacom (MTV, Nick), News Corporation (Star), Time Warner — have been around in India now for 10 years or more. Most have built up businesses with significant scale in one of the fastest growing consumer markets in the world. However, except for ESPN-Star Sports (in joint venture with Star), estimated to be around Rs 400 crore in revenues, Disney just hasn’t had a go at India. It had, till two years back, no recall and no equity with Indian kids.