There's a lot to think about and a lot at stake for National Geographic Asia's MD and EVP Zubin Gandevia, who transferred from India to Hong Kong at the beginning of the year just in time to oversee the launch of a new channel that has global aspirations, National Geographic Wild.
Wild, which debuted in the SAR earlier this year, is an important audience-boosting initiative for National Geographic. It focuses on the channel's most popular genre of wildlife and broadcast in English and Cantonese.
Ensuring Wild's success, however, is just one of the tasks facing Gandevia, former MD at NGC Network India, who had his South Asia brief significantly enlarged on his move to also include Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
He has to get to grips not only with these distinct and diverse TV markets but get revenue flowing from them too. "We've got a very strong presence in Hong Kong and Singapore," he says. "Now the challenge is how do you monetise other markets like Taiwan, Korea and China?"
And if that wasn't enough, a recent deal inked with key shareholder National Geographic Society enabling the broadcaster to deploy the organisation's content on other channels other than TV means Gandevia also has to look at ways to use this content online and on mobile phones.
Despite the scale of the job, one suspects however that Gandevia, who launched his first cable network when he was 16 and steers clear of too long-term plans — "they take your ability away to think on your feet" — enjoys it.
The freewheeling spirit of major shareholder News Corp, where the prevailing motto is 'better to seek forgiveness than permission', suits him. Having run his own company, Gandevia sees motivating employees to work as if they owned the company as the biggest challenge facing corporate organisations. "Once you've achieved that," he says, "the rest is simple."
National Geographic has helped achieve that goal by giving its employees the vision of what to do, and the freedom and tools to do it.
As far as Wild's concerned, he had helped thrash out the channel strategy in the early days with his boss Ward Platt, but once the idea had been hatched responsibility passed to other NatGeo executives to get the execution right.
"As long as you can find a balance of keeping out of day-to-day business, but still keep an eye on it, you're fine," he says.
For Gandevia, National Geographic represents an ideal mix of corporate order and entrepreneurial can-do. "I can't imagine being myself being straitjacketed in a large company or a large industry that has rules and you have to abide by them, very process driven and so on.
"Television still is an industry where creativity rules, that's what attracts to me to it. I don't mean creativity only in the people who make advertising or promos, but in everything you can do.
"Because it is a small industry churning out creative output, in its disorganisation there tends to be a method in its madness. It's chaotic, but it's very enjoyable, if you like that sort of thing. And I love it."
A career in this industry wasn't always the plan, with the teenage Gandevia on course for the rather more orderly world of chartered accountancy. A motorcycle — or rather, the desire to acquire one —changed all that, prompting the teenaged Gandevia to launch one of India's first cable TV services, selling taped content to rural households in order to raise the funds to buy his first bike.
The decisive day came when he flunked the oral part of his chartered accountancy exam by just two marks, having passed all his written exams. This prompted him to take a step back and think what he wanted to do with his life. TV won out.
His fledgling business, started when the cable industry barely existed in India, went onto become one of India's largest cable networks. It was eventually sold to Business India Television when Gandevia was 27, after which he moved to Star, one of the suitors for his start-up network.
Gandevia is now confronted with an even bigger canvas, but the unknowns that come with it ensure the man who relishes a challenge is in his element.
His hero is Formula One driver Michael Schumacher — not just because Gandevia recognises a kindred lover of speed (in addition to motorbikes, the TV executive has raced go-karts and once held a city record in Delhi).
"What I like about Schumacher is they say he wins more than half of his races before he's got into his car, because it's his mind that's winning," Gandevia says. "Formula One is about strategy and you can learn many business lessons from it. Not only is he the fastest guy on the track, he's also the fastest thinker on and off the track. That's what I like about him."
Ensuring Wild's success, however, is just one of the tasks facing Gandevia, former MD at NGC Network India, who had his South Asia brief significantly enlarged on his move to also include Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
He has to get to grips not only with these distinct and diverse TV markets but get revenue flowing from them too. "We've got a very strong presence in Hong Kong and Singapore," he says. "Now the challenge is how do you monetise other markets like Taiwan, Korea and China?"
And if that wasn't enough, a recent deal inked with key shareholder National Geographic Society enabling the broadcaster to deploy the organisation's content on other channels other than TV means Gandevia also has to look at ways to use this content online and on mobile phones.
Despite the scale of the job, one suspects however that Gandevia, who launched his first cable network when he was 16 and steers clear of too long-term plans — "they take your ability away to think on your feet" — enjoys it.
The freewheeling spirit of major shareholder News Corp, where the prevailing motto is 'better to seek forgiveness than permission', suits him. Having run his own company, Gandevia sees motivating employees to work as if they owned the company as the biggest challenge facing corporate organisations. "Once you've achieved that," he says, "the rest is simple."
National Geographic has helped achieve that goal by giving its employees the vision of what to do, and the freedom and tools to do it.
As far as Wild's concerned, he had helped thrash out the channel strategy in the early days with his boss Ward Platt, but once the idea had been hatched responsibility passed to other NatGeo executives to get the execution right.
"As long as you can find a balance of keeping out of day-to-day business, but still keep an eye on it, you're fine," he says.
For Gandevia, National Geographic represents an ideal mix of corporate order and entrepreneurial can-do. "I can't imagine being myself being straitjacketed in a large company or a large industry that has rules and you have to abide by them, very process driven and so on.
"Television still is an industry where creativity rules, that's what attracts to me to it. I don't mean creativity only in the people who make advertising or promos, but in everything you can do.
"Because it is a small industry churning out creative output, in its disorganisation there tends to be a method in its madness. It's chaotic, but it's very enjoyable, if you like that sort of thing. And I love it."
A career in this industry wasn't always the plan, with the teenage Gandevia on course for the rather more orderly world of chartered accountancy. A motorcycle — or rather, the desire to acquire one —changed all that, prompting the teenaged Gandevia to launch one of India's first cable TV services, selling taped content to rural households in order to raise the funds to buy his first bike.
The decisive day came when he flunked the oral part of his chartered accountancy exam by just two marks, having passed all his written exams. This prompted him to take a step back and think what he wanted to do with his life. TV won out.
His fledgling business, started when the cable industry barely existed in India, went onto become one of India's largest cable networks. It was eventually sold to Business India Television when Gandevia was 27, after which he moved to Star, one of the suitors for his start-up network.
Gandevia is now confronted with an even bigger canvas, but the unknowns that come with it ensure the man who relishes a challenge is in his element.
His hero is Formula One driver Michael Schumacher — not just because Gandevia recognises a kindred lover of speed (in addition to motorbikes, the TV executive has raced go-karts and once held a city record in Delhi).
"What I like about Schumacher is they say he wins more than half of his races before he's got into his car, because it's his mind that's winning," Gandevia says. "Formula One is about strategy and you can learn many business lessons from it. Not only is he the fastest guy on the track, he's also the fastest thinker on and off the track. That's what I like about him."
