Lets "click" in the Kannada market!

Generally when we talk about Kannada, more often than not we talk about literature, film, music, drama, folk forms & similar ones. But we come across very little discussion on how these can be seen as products & services that people utilize or experience. It is rarely seen from a business perspective, as a potential market. It is very important for businessmen (Kannadiga & non-Kannadiga) to understand the market potential of these Kannada-centric products & services. Let us open up a discussion on this.

Products & Services

We can perhaps start by preparing a list of products & services possible around Kannada. The list below is not an exhaustive one and we encourage readers to let their imagination add to this list.

The information below is organized under two headings: Content & Delivery Channels. Content is language specific & the Delivery channels are the infrastructure to deliver this content.

Sl. No	Content	Delivery Channels
	Literature	Book, Print Media, Internet
	News	Print Media, Radio, Television, Internet
	Films	Theatres & Multiplexes, Tapes & CDs, Television, Internet
	Music	Radio, Television, Tapes & CD, Internet
	Plays & Dramas	Auditoriums, Television
	Study Material	Books, Radio, Television, Tapen & CDs, Internet
	Software	Tapes & CDs, Internet
	Advertising	Radio, TV, Print Media, Public Spaces, Internet

We can drill down further a couple of levels under each of the line-items under Content heading and can define those as specific offerings in the market. For example, if you consider music as a category: classical music, light music (sugama sangeetha), film music, folk music, devotional music are a few sub-categories which can have specific offerings in the target market.
Newer opportunities that are emerging are:

• Kannada specific voice based call center services,
• Training centers to train people (wanting to do business with Kannada speaking people) on Kannada.

Market Size
There are two angles to look at the market size - namely the head-count of the existent market, and its size in terms of monetary revenue it can bring to the involved organization or body. On the former scale, head-count or population, the market is around 60 million + (with approximately 50 million inside Karnataka and 10 million outside Karnataka). On the latter scale, revenue, with a very conservative estimate, 60 million people spending an average of Rs 100 per month in this market bundles up to Rs 7200 crores per year.

Current Realization of Market potential

Low (may be 15-20 % market has been realized). There is tremendous opportunity in this market as the current players are small businesses run by individuals or families which lack professional management capability & there has been little effort in market exploration, tapping and development.

Although in the last couple of years, large corporations have entered the Television, Radio & Print Media, enterprises planning to enter these markets need to hire extremely talented people who are well-versed in Kannada and understand the pulse of the market. When this happens, the real value of the Kannada market will start getting tapped, and fetch attractive returns.

What next?

The write-up above with a preliminary analysis of the Kannada-centric products & services was to initiate a discussion & present a different perspective. Karnatique readers who may be interested in working with Banavasi Balaga in researching these markets & working with the industry representatives in initiating market development activities in these industries, please respond to banavasibalaga AT gmail DOT com.