Kalanithi Maran , owner of the Sun TV empire, stunned the aviation sector by beating out well-known names in Corporate India to emerge victorious in the race to buy SpiceJet. Mr Maran, whose Sun Network is one of the dominant names in the Indian television entertainment scene, has no experience in aviation. Nor has he partnered with somebody in the aviation business to do the deal. In this interview with ET, he explains the reasons behind his interest in the sector and his plans for SpiceJet. Excerpts:

Currently, you’re running a company with perhaps one of the best profit margins in the media and entertainment space and now you’re getting into a sector where profitability is hard to come by. Why aviation?
I look at the opportunity, at what’s going to happen in the future. Currently, the industry carries four million passengers per month, growing at the rate of 15%. We are seeing the purchasing power percolating to smaller cities. I strongly believe that if you have affordable pricing, you can do mass transportation in India, with infrastructure and new airports also coming up.

But people are sceptical of your entry into this space without past experience or core competency.
I am the chairman of the company, not the CEO. It is the CEO who requires core competency. The chairman requires foresight. I don’t believe in industry’s perception, I believe in creating trends.
When I started satellite television, people laughed at me saying Tamil cannot be in satellite television, it’s too costly. When I started radio, they said television has come, radio is a dead business. When I started DTH, they said there are too many big players. We are now 5.5 million subscribers strong. If I’m going to follow the herd, I’ll be one among the crowd. Let me be clear. All my steps are calculated, I am not going blindly with intuition. I never wanted to do it when oil prices were at $140 per barrel.

What kind of moves can we see on the pricing front? Also, aviation is a loss-making industry. How will you ensure that SpiceJet keeps its head above water?
Right now, SpiceJet and IndiGo are the only two profitable airlines. We picked up one company that is making profits. So it disproves your theory that it’s a loss-making industry. EBITDA for SpiceJet is 19% for FY10. The aviation sector hit rock bottom two years back. Now, it can only go up. That’s how we see it. We have been studying SpiceJet only for three months. Next couple of months, we will consolidate this acquisition.


Do you see your latest venture as a financial investment? How much time will you spend on aviation from now on? Currently, all your time goes to Sun TV. How will you divide you time between aviation and entertainment?
I am not an FII. Whatever business I do, I am an active player. If I wanted to be a financial investor, I would have stayed at 10%. I am not like that. If you see what we’ve done, over a period of three years, we have brought in professionals. We have got one of the best teams for Sun, it is all professionally managed. It is a board-run company.