Digitization Will Lead Growth In Music Industry: Manoj Dawane

Manoj Dawane found his calling in marketing whilst working as a trainee engineer in a company. He finished his MBA from Mumbai University and now has over 25 years of experience in the business. He started his career with handling product management functions (in Prepaid/VAS/Roaming) with top 2 Telecom Service Operators in India. He was responsible for complete PnL management of the largest telecom circle in India (UP) and headed Innovation Management for Bharti in India. Consumer Internet with the People Group catering to new age businesses like Shaadi.com and Mauj Mobile. He was also the CEO and Board Member of some of the earliest venture-funded companies in India. He also served a long tenure with Ericsson India as Technology & Policy and Strategy & Solutions Head. He has worked with many companies like Assocham, European Business Group, and IAMAI. He is also an angel investor and mentor to select startups in the fields of High Technology, analytics and Telecom. Post 2017, he became a full-time entrepreneur and started his own venture in the high-tech field of Media Consumption Measurement in Real Time on Smart Devices. He started his recent venture - VTION (Vidhi Techinnovation Opportunities Network) in 2018. The startup "provides cost-effective real-time analytics data and media consumption measurement techniques for broadcast radio, bringing together various stakeholders of the ecosystem". We caught up with Manoj Dawane after his panel - Understanding The Indian Consumer, A Global Opportunity - at Music Inc 2.0 to briefly discuss music and his venture - VTION. [caption id="attachment_9693" align="aligncenter" width="479"] In Picture (L to R)- Roochay Shukla, Manoj Dawane, Gautam Raj Anand, Tony Kakkar, Anita Nayyar[/caption]

1. What do you think is the state and scope of music in the present scenario in India?
   • Music is integrated with Indian lives from past centuries and so will remain in future centuries as well. [In] recreational, mental solace, mood driven and commercial in the same breath - [present] scope is a very essential part of human life, with all the stress that humans of all age and gender go through. Nothing [is] better than music.
2. How do you think different industries/government can contribute to the music culture?
   • Industries across the spectrum realise the power of music as an engagement driver. From commercials to corporate presentations, everything is laced with music. This will continue as streaming becomes more and more popular and the effective use of the digital medium enhances manifold. So industry adoption will trend upwards.
   • On Governments : They need to facilitate the industry with good incentives to produce the best in the world. Further they have to protect the interest of all concerned in the value chain, from end consumer to artist, author, composer, musician. There needs to be swathe of reforms that they can undertake to facilitate and grow music industry.
3. What direction do you think the music industry is heading in, in the future?
   • Huge surge of activity on digital is going to be the real definition of music industry growth in the future. Having said that, other utilities like Smart Speakers are also enhancing the distribution scope of music. With bandwidth costs in the country at probably lowest in the world, mobile based consumption of music will rule roost for a long time to come.
4. Can you tell us how VTION is contributing to the music industry in terms of data? Are there any new plans in motion?
   • VTION prides itself on generating listenership data of end consumers across all genres of music that is heard on smartphones. This gives a good idea to the ecosystem at scale on what consumption preferences the consumer is exhibiting. Which in turn makes the supply side (record labels, artists, authors and composers) produce to the trends that are visible. On the demand side, brands, agencies and DSPs can plan their marketing efforts in a better manner. That is our current proposition.
   • In the near future, we will have similar mechanisms for Video based and Smart Speaker based music as well.
   • We will endeavour to serve the music industry to the best effort possible.