Page 151 - From Bombay to Bollywoord The Making of a Global Media Industri

138 << Dot-Coms and the Making of an Overseas Territory

Trade analyst Taran Adarsh’s weekly box-office report is highly regarded in the industry.

overseas market. However, asserting their value in these aspirational (the
Internet as an index of globality) and strategic terms (the need to understand
and target NRIs) was only one part of a larger challenge. To become truly
indispensable knowledge brokers, these companies would also have to create
engaging content that would attract overseas audiences on a daily basis. As
we will see in the following section, success in creating compelling content
and attracting audiences was determined by these companies’ locations in
Bombay and their ability to forge connections in a range of social networks
in the industry. Specifically, this meant moving beyond marketing/promo-
tions and becoming part of the world of media/entertainment journalism.

Location Matters

“If you want to be successful as a Bollywood site, you need to have a pres-
ence in Bombay,” declared Sunil Thakur, founder-CEO of U.S.-based wahin-
dia.com. Thakur had started wahindia.com in 2002 while pursuing an MBA
at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Like other Bollywood sites based
outside India, wahindia.com offered the usual mix of the latest news about
films and stars, film music previews, promotional trailers, and slide shows.
Websites like wahindia.com, planetbollywood.com, and bollyvista.com
used Bollywood content to attract traffic and generate advertising revenue,