Indian Television Dot Com

Bonnie Jain : CEO - Eternal Dreams

Submitted by ITV Production on Feb 19, 2003

Name: Bonnie Jain

Designation: CEO - Eternal Dreams

Sun Sign: Aries 14 April 1974

Educational Experience
B.Com from St Annes College, Mumbai

Professional Experience
Six years with Saraswat Audio Visual and Amitabh Bachchan Corp Ltd (ABCL).

Two years with Cuecom Entertainment.

One year with Channel Nine India.

Presently with Eternal Dreams since 2001.

Job Profile
Handling the entire company as the CEO. The company is a sales agency for various TV serials, TV concerts / events, movies like ITAA on DD I and Sony, Non Stop Blockbusters and Non Stop Music Masti on DD Metro recently. Also in the pipeline are SFX Model Hunt 2003 on Star Plus and DD Metro besides brand specific ground events in various parts of the country for dealers and consumers.

In fact after the traumatic experience with Tara Marathi, the past four months have been really good for us and we would close this year's turnover at over Rs 60 million, which will help us breathe again.

Bonnie with Pankaj Chaturvedi, CEO-Baskin Robins

Media as career choice
It just happened at the age of 18 when Jaya Bachchan launched Saraswat Audio Visuals and asked me to assist her. Thereafter it has been a very fast journey for me with various portfolio changes and department changes. Right from ad sales to marketing to production to meeting up with all important people in the film industry.

With Cuecom Entertainment I got to know the entire South Industry. I always considered myself to be jack of all and master of none but who knew that one day it would help me head a company which has done phenomenally well for itself in such a short period despite several set backs.

Current Media scenario
This seems to be a very generic question and being the head of a sales agency I would answer this only in terms of share of revenue which I feel is getting really competitive. And due to many players, instead of rates increasing on an annual basis, they seem to be dipping for channels and especially for Doordarshan.

People say there is no money in the market. This is a logic which I have never been able to digest. There is over Rs 40 billion rupees available for television advertising alone and statistics say that the ad pie is increasing and not decreasing. It is very encouraging for the advertising industry and in my opinion it is just a matter of right approach to sales and mainly after-sales.

We, at Eternal Dreams, believe in providing value for money to our clients and always try our best to over-deliver on our commitments made to them. CAS is definitely going to impact the television advertising drastically but it's too early to say what will happen and how it will happen.

Right and wrong about current media scenario
Right - Moving slowly but in the right direction.

Wrong - The way media is bought, Rs 40 billion being spend based on a sample size which is as low as 20,000 people all over India with a penetration of over 70 million TV homes.

I would strongly support CAS and if implemented well, it will change the entire media scenario and then the deserving would get the right share of the advertising spend.

Five years from now
Making movies, movies and movies.