MPW 2023: How Sun TV’s Kavery Kalanithi Maran oversees content at the Rs 4,000-cr company

Occupying pride of place in Kavery Kalanithi Maran’s ultra-spacious and swanky 11th-floor Chennai office is a giant TV screen airing Sun TV. Almost synonymous with cable TV in south India, it is the flagship satellite TV channel of Sun TV Network, which generates over Rs 4,000 crore in revenue annually. “I watch a lot of TV,” says Maran, the network’s Executive Director.

As the person in charge of the content for the group’s 30-plus TV channels across six languages— Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, and Marathi—her eyes are glued not just to what’s playing on them but those of competitors as well.

“Every Tuesday, we have meetings with the fiction heads where feedback is openly discussed. So, I need to know what I’m talking about.” She is also ably helped by the half-dozen diverse committees set up internally, comprising men, women, youngsters, and seniors, to monitor all the content. “My husband taught us that feedback is crucial.”

Sun TV, started in 1993 by her husband and Executive Chairman Kalanithi Maran, is one of India’s most watched channels, with a 40 per cent viewership share in Tamil. Over the years, the group has crossed the southern borders to enter Maharashtra and West Bengal. It now owns FM radio stations, the film production and distribution venture Sun Pictures, the IPL team Sunrisers Hyderabad, and the Sunrisers Eastern Cape team in South Africa’s T20 league.

She says her husband inspired her to join the business in the early years, when they had a lean staff. “I started assisting him to take on some of the load, and that inevitably led to my taking on greater responsibilities in the company as the business grew.”

Despite the OTT revolution, Kavery is confident that India still has close to 100 million homes where people watch TV using a cable or a DTH connection. “That is a large number, and that segment is not going away in a hurry.” Not to be left behind, the group offers an OTT app, Sun NXT, with catchup content and an extensive film library. “It is consistently gaining in subscriber count, both in India and abroad,” Kavery says.

@SaysVidya