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The Rediff Business Special/ Ashok Banker

What went wrong with ABCL

Part I: Big B' dream of showbiz supershop comes unstuck

What went wrong with Amitabh Bachchan/ABCL? Well, to put it briefly: the letters C and L. Amitabh Bachchan was fine as long as he was just plain AB. It was adding those two additional letters that began his long tale of woe.

The convoluted corporate fiasco that is ABCL today will probably take an entire book to unravel: it would make interesting and valuable reading. (See Part III for details). After all, ABCL's demise marks not just the end of one company, but of a campaign to corporatise the so-called Indian entertainment "industry" itself.

While AB's perennial high profile makes him an easy target for conjecture and controversy, the truth is that he's not alone. Other attempts at corporatising and bringing professional management standards to the hitherto disorganised, financially and professionally indisciplined industry have met with similar failure.

Witness the fate of Amit Khanna and Mahesh Bhatt's Plus Channel group of companies, which just two years ago was the country's largest producer of television software. Plus Channel diversified prematurely into feature film production, churning out a record 22 films in as many months, while also branching into event management, music, audio publishing, and a host of other media.

The result? Today, Plus Channel is a shadow of its former self, barely able to stay one step ahead of its debtors, struggling to regain even a fraction of its former stature as a television producer.

The bubble burst not just for ABCL alone, but for a whole line of entrepreneurs who were too quick to spot mega-opportunities where there were none. Like the overpaid executives of ABCL, these false visionaries spun grandiose dreams of global conquest and mega conglomeration.

In the same private placement prospectus for ABCL, plans are spelt out for activities ranging from event management, celebrity management, film production and distribution, audio publishing, television production, documentary film production, commercial sales of spin-off products ranging from posters to toys, and even magazines publishing. This last item is significant in demonstrating how extravagantly the authors of the document overshot their mark.

In the first three years alone, they envisaged this division alone leaping from an income of Rs 5 million to Rs 10 million. Their model of success? A supplement issued along with a Bombay newspaper which itself has since become defunct.

The plans and dreams woven by ABCL's executives are almost ludicrous in their hyperbole. Comparing Bachchan's potential brand equity to that of Walt Disney's creations (in merchandising terms), Michael Jackson (in music publishing), and Sylvester Stallone (in movies). Too high, too far, too soon: If an epitaph were to be etched out, that's what it should read.

The problem with this was that it completely ignored Indian realities, Indian sensibilities. The charisma and power of Amitabh Bachchan has always been that of an actor. A fine actor, a charismatic performer, an intense persona that perfectly captured the angst and frustration of an entire generation coming of age in the Seventies and Eighties.

Yes, perhaps even a great actor. But an actor nevertheless. Not a product, like Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, to be printed on children's milk mugs and marketed across supermarket counters. Not a dancing seal or a prancing horse to be paraded in pop videos. Not an agent to other actors -- like Sunil Shetty and Aamir Khan to help them secure lucrative advertising endorsement contracts. Not an event organiser of stage tamashas. Not a music cassette producer and publisher. Not a film producer and distributor. Not a shipping magnate (among Bachchan's various follies was the purchase of several old ships in a vain attempt to take his corporate dreams to the high seas as well). Not a magazine publisher, for crying out loud!

If Amitabh Bachchan had simply continued being Amitabh Bachchan, the air would be clear. We would be able to see and judge him on his own merit. As the star of commercial filmi potboilers. Some good, some awful, some brilliant (perhaps). But in corporatising himself, he also dehumanised himself. He tried to play the ultimate multiple role performance. Not one, not two, not three Amitabh Bachchans, a whole chorus line of ABs, all playing different parts in a vast extravaganza. In doing this, he took on the inevitable risks and gamble of not one business, but of several.

It seems never to have occurred to ABCL's executives that Amitabh would have been better served if they had entered one field at a time, achieved success in that area, consolidated, then moved on to the next. They had to launch ten trains at once. All shooting off in different directions. All piloted by the same engine driver. They had to capitalise huge sums from the market, pump in obscene amounts of investment into half-baked projects, some of which remain incomplete even today, in the mistaken belief that more money meant more success.

In doing so, they completely failed to anticipate or even take into account the possibility of major developments and trends in the industries they were entering.

The fact that Jaya Bachchan, under her company Saraswati Audiovisuals, had achieved success with a serial Dekh Bhai Dekh on Doordarshan's Metro Channel, was taken as an automatic assumption that any and every serial ABCL produced would be a gigantic money-spinner.

Among the corporation's ridiculous plans was an intention of importing Spiderman and Phantom cartoon series from a Hong Kong-based firm and selling them locally in India at a fee of over Rs 300,000 per episode. Similar cartoon series can be bought for perhaps one tenth of that fee!

Their film distribution plans entailed purchasing films at high prices and earning back these high prices as well as a whopping profit. This worked in the case of films such as Bombay, Bandit Queen, and to a lesser extent with ABCL's own venture, Tere Mere Sapne. But other ventures such as the disastrous Sazaa-E-Kalapaani and the ABCL film Naam Kya Hai (which has still to find buyers) resulted in flops outweighing the hits by a ratio of 10:1. And the reason this happened was because ABCL believed that it was necessary to buy by the dozen in order to be assured of success. The idea of investing selectively in fewer films never seems to have occurred to them.

But perhaps the biggest debacle that ABCL's corporate suits were responsible for was the Miss World Contest. The event management arm of the corporation, set up originally to host Bachchan's own concerts abroad, was thought to be in need of a mega-event. Hence the bid for the Miss World Contest. In the process, they completely forgot the effect of over-hype on Indian consumers. As well as the fact that we still remain a conservative society, unaccustomed to the sight of half-naked women parading onstage for a frivolous award.

The result? ABCL booked a loss of over Rs 70 million for that one night's work itself. Among its creditors on the show are the still photographers who were covering the event, and The Spastics Society of India, which had been promised a large donation.

The list is long and painful. A Star Track contest whose winners were not placed in a single film or television serial. Stars Aamir Khan and Sunil Shetty, among others, who signed contracts granting ABCL exclusive rights to act as agents in procuring endorsement contracts, still waiting for those elusive contracts to materialise. A CEO who once bid for a film whose distribution rights had already been purchased by the corporation! Sponsors BPL -- in the photograph alongside, Bachchan is seen with Rajiv Chandrasekhar, BPL's managing director -- who signed on the Big B for a lucrative advertising contract and discovered to their expensive chargrin that the returns didn't justify the investment. Doordarshan programmes which had been bid for by the corporation at far higher rates than the maximum ad revenue possible for those time slots....

A series of gross miscalculations, a complete lack of understanding of the entertainment medium, an excess of hype and arrogance coupled with remarkably poor image management of their own pratfalls... virtually every word in that original prospectus seems laughably exaggerated today. And like any grandiose plan that is too monstrously absurd to succeed, also very tragic.

Not because it marks the failure of a corporation that sought to be the first of its kind. Or because it suggests that Indian entertainment is best left to the lalas and the dalals rather than Harvard-educated MBAs. Or even because it depicts with depressing surety that the only sure thing in Hindi films is that there isn't a sure thing.

But because it marks the downfall of a man. An actor, who, given his talent and strength and force of personality, just might have grown into the very legend ABCL sought to make him. A real-life Mickey Mouse. A Michael Jackson of the silver screen. A Sylvester Stallone playing Rambo and Rocky in real life with his debtors.

Instead, all they did was take Amitabh Bachchan and sent him to the worst kind of hell possible in Bollywood: a financial one.

Part III: Chronology of a downfall

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