Case Studies

Rajat Kapoor(Raghu Romeo)   -  IRCTC  -   Kingfisher - Rajshri takes the digital road.

 Raghu Romeo
Rajat Kapoor – Case Study

Introduction:
In an industry where originality is mocked and sheer instinct is a price paid by every budding filmmaker; acts of bravery are a rarity. It’s basic, it’s proven, it’s the food chain – the little fish are the first to be digested. Imagine a freshwater shrimp taking on a blue whale, baiting it and reeling it into shore – seems impossible but that’s what makes it all the more interesting. Rajat Kapoor is one such enterprising mammal that had the stones to break away from the pack and do it well!

All documented accounts of independent filmmakers talk of hardship, struggle, perseverance, determination, and passion. Rajat Kapoor encompasses all these factors and took us to Level 2. We all knew him – sure! He was in Dil Chahta Hai playing the diplomatically romantic uncle of Preity Zinta; we’ve seen him again in Monsoon Wedding as Pee Key Dubey and in Subhash Ghai’s comeback disaster Kisna. But what do we really know?

A born film buff, Rajat Kapoor knew where he was headed at the tender age of 14. Film was where it’s. Growing up in Delhi, there was no dearth of culture. With a creative streak running through every vein in his blood Rajat was unconsciously taking his first steps towards stardom and Bollywood. Rajat was involved in the Delhi theatre scene and in 1983 he started a theatre groups called Chingari. With strong friendships cemented he made his way next to FTII Pune, breaking away from family life at the age of 25. With a grounded course in Film Direction, Rajat was all set to take on the world. That’s how the best of us feel like we can conquer the world with our newfound knowledge and spanking new wings of freedom. Reality hits hard, clipping all thoughts (and wings) of freedom and a greener planet.

Money was less, but it trickled in nonetheless with ad spots and then TV shows and then films. Rajat accidentally fell in, and there spawned the germ. He made a few films like Private Detective: Two Plus Two Plus One and Hypnothesis. He continued to write his scripts while doing the odd acting gig in a movie, play or on TV.

The Need:
Raghu Romeo, Rajat Kapoor’s brainchild was, however, no accident. He had the script with him for a few years [Then it was called Raghu] and had begun the rounds of producers and big movie houses. The initial response as usual was a wide-eyed smile and a blasphemous “Brilliant script sir! Very good.” Kapoor aptly puts it, “Without any big stars attached to the project producers and financiers were weary to fund the film and thus there were no takers. There was no one to put a single paisa where their mouth was”

So while Raghu was finding it’s bearing on land, Rajat decided to send his script to the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) for a co-production. With a bare minimum, shoestring budget of Rs.80 lakhs the NFDC came back with a positive response of a co-production. But as there are twists and turns in every move, this too had a similar one. The NFDC was only ready to fund the film with Rs.40 lakhs. That was not enough. After years of acting stints and other assembled assorted gigs Rajat had managed to save up Rs.15 lakhs, which went entirely into the making of Raghu Romeo. He was still short! 25 lakhs short!

Rajat: “After a 5 years, I was able to save 15 lakhs. The budget was a measly 80 lakhs. NFDC put in 40 lakhs and with my 15 lakhs I was still 25 lakhs short. Out of sheer desperation, I turned to the Internet. The script for Raghu Romeo was with me since the past 6 to 7 years and with no takers, I went ahead and wanted to make the film anyway.”

The Solution:
Rajat knew it was a dangerous world out there and that the sharks of the industry would not sit through a re-pitch of the film. He was desperate and was running out of options really quickly. But desperate times call for innovative methods. And that’s what this net savvy filmmaker did. He sat down and made a list of hundred friends who would give him the money, no questions asked. But Rajat felt that he’d be able to reach out to a larger community through the Internet.

Rajat: “ Out of desperation I sent an email to all my friends and family asking them to invest in my movie starting with a sum of Rs.10, 000 only. With the miracle of the Internet the email started to be forwarded to everyone! Soon I started to receive emails from Finland, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the US.”

The Internet was a convenient medium and far less embarrassing than asking for money in person or over the phone. It proved to be better for Rajat as well as his future co-producers. If they didn’t have the money, they simply shoot out an email and regretfully decline. The process was painless!

Rajat took the list of friends and family and wrote an email straight from the heart. No professional writers or public relations experts or any lawyers to help. It was just Rajat and his keyboard. He poured his heart out in an email that would eventually reach 3000 odd inboxes. This is what Rajat Kapoor had to say in his letter of appeal.

I know this must be one of the most unusual proposals, but I hope that mad initiatives like this work, when the conventional methods don’t.

So here is the proposal. I invite you to be a part producer in the films. You could contribute anything over Rs.10, 000 and you’ll have a pro-rata share in the profit of the film.

How It Works:
By asking for a mere sum of Rs.10, 000 Rajat Kapoor left the playing field open for anyone to come and take a shot. His proposal was simple; start small (just like he did). He asked for a paltry sum of Rs.10, 000 as an investment for the contributors. Buying one share for Rs.10, 000 would allow the investor to have a stake in the film after it covered costs. The shot in the dark worked. At first, a handful of emails came back with negative responses, but after the support of an article in Bombay Times and Rediff.com, Rajat had arrived and was on his way. The emails trickled at first but after the media attention his heroic effort got Rajat 60 – 70 emails a day with people asking if they could offer their help in kind if not monetary methods. People from all over the world came back with positive responses.

Rajat: “After Rediff and Bombay Times featured my story the emails started pouring in, around 70 emails a day. People sent emails saying that they believe in this kind of cinema and would like to know how they could help. Some sent in money, some sent in good wishes. Others offered services like helping me to write the lyrics, or the website that was made. Some one who didn’t have any money to offer but wanted to help nonetheless did it. I replied to every email personally, that was the promise I made to myself. Whether it was rude or appreciative, I replied to almost 70 emails daily. It was like a miracle and things have a strange way of working out. With the amount of positive energy around it felt like everyone who helped wanted to make a change.”

The money started to come slowly but steadily. Friends and strangers alike offered help with acting, music, design, script, production, and etc. the ones who couldn’t help offered help monetarily offered their blessing and good wishes.

Rajat: “This anonymous medium helped me tremendously. It doesn’t pester anyone. If you got a mail could either ignore it, delete it or respond to it. There is no pressure and no constant pestering from a anyone. Like I said it was a miracle.”

After a few months of money coming in, Raghu became Raghu Romeo and it was ready to storm audiences’ worldwide.

Rajat Kapoor has climbed his Everest and had finally found his Unicorn. The crazy experiment worked (like most well intentioned experiments do) and Raghu Romeo was born.

The Outcome:
Rajat now began his rounds again this time fully equipped with complete edited reels of film. He became touring the Film Festivals of the world. MAMI, Dhaka International Film Festival, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Oslo, San Francisco, Toronto, Barcelona, Shanghai, Florence, Trivandrum, Calcutta and the big daddy of them all the prestigious Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland – Piazza Grande.

Rajat Kapoor had arrived and Ragu Romeo had landed. This labor of love and hard work had paid off. Raghu Romeo had won the Best Film Award at MAMI. The star Vijay Raaz won Best Actor Award at the Dhaka Film Festival. To top it all off Rajat Kapoor won the National Award for Raghu Romeo in 2004.

His effort was not in vain. Kapoor inspires the lesser mortals to be true to themselves and firmly believes in all their endeavors. Never underestimate the power of goodwill as it can save the best of us.

‘Ask and you shall receive,
Knock and it shall be opened.’

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 IRCTC Revolutionises Indian Rail Travel - Case Study

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) operate an online booking service that has simplified rail travel in India since its deployment in 2002. During the set-up of this solution, IRCTC overcame several challenges and its web site has now emerged as a user-friendly, profit-making enterprise.

The early days of online booking
The Indian Railways has the second-largest railway network in the world. It is run by the Ministry of Railways, which formed the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) in 1999 to manage hospitality services during rail travel. The IRCTC is also responsible for information, publicity and global reservation systems. It launched an online booking service in August 2002 to enable customers to book tickets from the comfort of their own home and to reduce ticketing costs for the railways through savings in manpower. Challenges faced by the IRCTC during the introduction of the online booking system included the logistics of ticket delivery and incompatibility with the existing system. Today, there are 3,200 tickets booked a day on IRCTC’s web site, which has over one million registered customers. The system, based on the principle of low-margin, high volume, broke even in August 2003.

BroadVision e-commerce platform
The IRCTC reservation site allows passengers to access train fares, routes and availability in real-time, book tickets online and track the status of their ticket.

The system runs on a BroadVision e-commerce platform and Intel-based servers which, according to the IRCTC, provide a robust and cost-efficient platform. The organisation also uses a combination of Intel, Red Hat and Oracle’s E-Business Suite. This allows it to leverage its legacy applications with efficient integration and provide reliability for the web-enabled system.128-bit encryption and the practice of not storing credit card details in the system ensures secure online transactions. The tickets are printed centrally in Delhi and are delivered within a twenty four hour deadline in Mumbai and Delhi. Delivery to any other part of the country is within a three day period.

A number of government and private agencies are working together to make the project a success. Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), which manages the original railway reservation system, collaborated with IRCTC to integrate the online services with the existing system. BroadVision integrated the legacy system with the online reservation system and developed a process to verify credit card information in real-time, as bookings had to be confirmed on the railway reservation system immediately. BroadVision developed the e-commerce application with an Oracle backend; HCL is charged with the network and its security. 

Unexpected high number led to congestion
Initially, IRCTC greatly underestimated the number of hits and was plagued with congestion problems which led to their payment gateways crashing. ICICI Bank and Citibank then upgraded their services to cope with the tremendous demand. The issue of failed transactions compelled IRCTC to deploy a process to refund money for such transactions.

IRCTC has begun to cater to the corporate sector, wherein companies can sign up on the site and book tickets for employees through a single account.

E-Payment benefits
 “With the introduction of the e-payment system people can now make payments for their tickets in any form like credit and debit cards. We have also been successful in providing a convenient way of booking tickets for the customers, either online or from a phone in the comfort of home,” said R B Das, Group General Manager, CRIS.

The web site has had a two-fold benefit, the first being increased user convenience. Users have the flexibility to book tickets in a convenient environment owing to the easy access to train schedules, routes and fares along with the ease of payment. Issues like tracking the status of the ticket at any time using the PNR number or getting a duplicate ticket issued have been simplified by emailing the ticket details to the passengers as soon as a booking is registered.

The benefits to IRCTC include the reduction in manpower costs associated with automation of processes. However, introduction of the online services did not reduce the load on the traditional reservation system. The web site also generates revenue from online advertisement sales.

IRCTC’s initiative ties in to its mandate to promote tourism through publicity and global reservation systems. It has made rail travel simpler and more convenient.

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 Kingfisher Airlines Rides High On Web ‘E’-Nitiatives - Case Study

Considering the days when one had to get stuck in traffic jams, and long queues only to have the ticket booking counters shut when you approach your turn, there has been a big turn around in the way air tickets are booked. Online travel is about a Rs.2000 crore market in India, forming less than 5% of the travel business. With IATA’s target of making all carriers switch to e-ticketing by the end of the year, the runway appears smoother for airline carriers as well as end consumers.

Late Entrance Advantage
Kingfisher Airlines took advantage of its late entry into the market to start a web-based interface with ‘guests’- as their passengers are called. It was recently said to have topped the e-ticketing race, as it achieved 100% e-ticketing.  According to industry estimates, e-ticketing saves carriers about Rs.200-400 per ticket. Chandrashekhar Nene, VP IT, Kingfisher Airlines mentions, “When a guest buys a ticket from an agent, I as the airline have to get the money back from the agent. The whole accounting is done through a certain coupon system. With technology coming in, the coupons are just a digital image which can be viewed multiple times.” A leap from the commonly used paper ticketing system, it was a big task to educate security and other personnel to accept the ‘print out’ as a valid entry pass.

Nene, also a member of the e-ticket evangelist committee of IATA explains, “Once we were on to the portal as a way of interaction with our guests, we thought of offering other services. Since they buy their ticket from the web, they could use the web to get their membership to our ‘King Club’, check their balance and use their miles to redeem it for goodies. We then went a step further and offered the service of printing their boarding pass from the web, and the ability to choose their seat.” Their ‘roving agents’ help save on an average 8 minutes of passenger time by approaching their guests when they are in line for security check and helping them check in through a Wi-fi enabled PDA that is connected to a blue tooth printer. All passengers would surely appreciate any escape from standing in a queue.

Sabre Airline Solution for passenger reservation
Kingfisher Airlines implemented world leader Sabre Airline Solutions' passenger reservations and departure control systems - the SabreSonic Passenger Solutions, to manage its reservations, pricing, ticketing and reporting efficiently. Their web applications run on SabreSonic Web module, which also ties up to the SMS platform to provide confirmations.  They needed a dependable, mission critical technology to help analyse the market and determine the best approaches to maximise revenue. Sabre AirMax Revenue Manager, the Quasar passenger revenue accounting system and the Sabre Loyalty Suite to optimise operations helped them do just that. A large suite of products from the same vendor enabled seamless integration across their entire operations. Nene reflects, “This helps us pin point the benefits and pain areas of our system, and we also intend to use the same system with our partners, Air Deccan.”

How does the Web benefit the enterprise?
While the web allows passengers a lot of ease in terms of saving time, and hassle, how does it benefit the enterprise? Nene explains, “The beauty of e-commerce is that all the information is online, so we can access it from anywhere, check on our progress, maintain records, make reports, the works. Everything is automatic, so there is no chance of errors in entry. I can also track where a guest has travelled and make him personalised offers based on that information.” So apart from a cost advantage, there is also a speed advantage. Says Nene, “Today, the whole game of running a business is how quickly you get information, put it to use and judge your decisions like changing flight schedules, etc.”

Evaluating biometrics
In the process of upgrading servers and networks for faster processes, Kingfisher is also testing biometric systems to enhance security. The carrier, which is looking at expansion in its destination offerings, with plans of starting flights to USA mid next year will also foray into the online tourism market – Kingfisher Holidays. Nene sums it up saying, “This will add to our initiative of cross selling various products and services online, where our guests will get special discounts and offers. The web is a very powerful, eco friendly tool which we are in the process of exploiting to create a revolution.” 

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 Rajshri takes the digital road.

Established on August 15, 1947, Rajshri is one of India’s oldest, largest and most successful entertainment house. Their focus is on producing wholesome family entertainers, with a balanced blend of Indian culture, tradition and values.  Some of Rajshri’s classic films are Dosti, Uphaar, Geet Gaata Chal, Chitchor, , Maine Pyar Kiya, Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, Hum Saath-Saath Hain and Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon. It is also one of the country’s largest film distributors. 

Rajshri Media (P) Limited is their new digital entertainment and media arm. The company aims to create, aggregate and distribute rich, premium Indian content to digitally connected consumers worldwide. The mission of the company is to enrich the lives of millions across the world with the power of Indian wisdom, heritage and entertainment, using digital media and technology as an enabler.

Rajshri.com offers Indian video content across multiple genres, through free streaming and paid downloads to users across the world. 

 The Need:
There are about 25 million NRI’s and people of Indian origin living abroad, who regularly follow Indian entertainment content through movies, music and lately television serials too. There is also a huge following for the same among non Indian residents in many parts of Central and South East Asia, Africa, Russia, Caribbean’s, and parts of Europe. To cater to the needs of such audiences across the world through cinema halls alone is an extremely tough task, not only because of the fact that there are not too many cinema halls that play Indian movies but also because not all the movies made here reach the foreign audiences through legal cd’s and dvd’s. In an attempt to bridge this gap between demand and supply, piracy comes into the picture. In most cases, the pirated copies of the movies reach the foreign audiences even before the release of the movie there.

The Solution:
The company decided to launch Rajshri.com in November 2006, with the simultaneous release of Vivah in theatres and on the web – the first of its kind. The company aims to create, aggregate and distribute rich, premium Indian content to digitally connected consumers worldwide. In this way, they aim to convert a non-consumer into a legitimate consumer. 

Rajshri.com provides online downloads and free streaming of Indian video content like movies, music videos, documentaries, episodes of television serials and shows. In the streaming model, a number of films, documentaries and songs are available for free viewing.
In the ‘download’ model is based on the concept of pay-and-view where the website allows the user to download the movie or any other video at a particular cost. The website charges users anywhere between $3 and $7 per movie with the exception of a few like Vivah, which costs $9.99. The movies are copy protected hence cannot be pirated.
Movies are offered for a 72-hour download. For this, the company uses the Microsoft developed software, Windows DRM (digital rights management). The software is designed to provide secure delivery of audio and/or video content over an IP network to a PC or other playback device in such a way that the distributor can control how that content is used.

How it works:
Digital media files can be easily copied and distributed without any reduction in quality. As a result, digital media files are being widely distributed on the Internet today, through both authorized and unauthorized distribution channels. Piracy is a concern when security measures are not in place to protect content.

Windows Media DRM enables content providers like Rajshri.com to protect their content and maintain control over distribution by creating licenses for each digital media file in their way they want. So, this software can protect the content from either being copied multiple times, or prevent such data from being burnt onto CDs and DVDs, or make the downloaded data be available only for a limited period of time like a ‘Single Play rental license’ where if the user tries to play the movie for the second time he or she would be directed to a license clearing house or e-commerce Web site, where they may be presented with the option to purchase an unlimited playback license.

The software is designed to be renewable, that is, it is designed on the assumption that it will be cracked and must be constantly updated by Microsoft. The result is that while the scheme has been cracked several times, it has usually not remained cracked for long.

Having been the pioneer of the digital revolution in this particular field, this business model of Rajshri.com has been quiet a success. The website has been a hit especially with the NRI community.
The website at a point had served over 1 million video streams in 7 days. The simultaneous release of Vivah in the movie screens and on the web has been received very well by audiences.
There are now competitors such as Reliance ADAG’s Bigflicks.com and Piotv.com in the market who pose a challenge to Rajshri.com.
The company is currently working on different models of distribution, monetization and are analysing consumer habits and preferences for the consumption of ‘desi’ digital content. The company also plans to screen their own repertoire of movies on other portals offering the service and is also planning a foray into the mobile space.

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