JioStar CEO Kiran Mani on why ‘being boring’ is good for his job

Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Anupamaa have defined households and behaviour patterns in India,” Mani says, adding that while IPL is a big story to be talked about, the company’s bread and butter is general entertainment.Other than reality programming dominated by the likes of Bigg Boss and web originals such as Criminal Justice and Special Ops 2.0, he points to the firm’s large library of Hollywood content, including slates from Peacock and HBO.“Cricket has been a very important propeller to build big viewership, but we are a 400 million monthly active user platform clocking a billion hours of watch time. That doesn’t happen just because of cricket,” he insists. One of the things with the Indian audience, Mani points out, is that you cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach.

“The content diversity is massive. Indian audiences are five years ahead of every other global audience in technology adoption. At the same time, Indian audiences are about five years behind in economic unlock (propensity to pay).

The greatest challenge in India is bridging that decade gap. You have to be ahead on the technology curve, but you have to adopt your business principles to ensure that even though they are 10 years behind (economically), when they catch up, they yield phenomenal returns. So it’s about squeezing and bridging that gap.

That’s really the unlock that we constantly work on,” he says.Referring to himself as a hands-on leader who likes to be in the thick of things, Mani says most of his schedule revolves around problem-solving. “If you look at my calendar, 80% of it will be filled with two types of meetings in a week. First, listening to big ideas and seeing whether or how I can make them happen.