Media Industry's shifts in business models, platform economy and what to build next with Miten Sampat, CSO at Times Internet Use Case

In today’s Use Case podcast, we try to understand how the media industry has changed in the recent past, what sort of business models are working and how founders of new media startups should think about monetisation. Check out the timestamps for more.
Joining us to dive deep into these trends is Miten Sampat, the Chief Strategy Officer of Times Internet, the internet company owned by the Times Group. He and his team have led ~15 acquisitions and 10+ minority investments, making them one of the most active Corp VC / M&A arm in the India internet sector. He is a board member for multiple new media and internet companies such as MX Player, ET-Money, Dineout, Haptik, OML, Shuttl and Myra, among others.
🎧Listen in to the episode on your browser or find it on Apple/Google Podcast apps, Spotify, or Stitcher; ⚡️⚡️⚡️Please consider leaving us a review and rating us on Apple podcasts if you find this episode useful. ⚡️⚡️⚡️
Note: Link to Miten’s 2010 blog discussed on the show at around 27:00; some thoughts about the topic after the timestamp
Here are the timestamps:
* 0:00= Introducing Miten; Media as the most disrupted industry through all industrial revolutions
* 2:00= Two big types of transitions media has had to face in recent past
* 4:00= Shift from advertising to subscription model; Why now?⚡️
* 7:00= Competing with Facebook and Google for advertising- is it worth it? Can you do it?
* 8:44= Trust deficit leading shift to influencer/ personality driven content?🔮
* 9:37= Competing with vs utilising Facebook and Google platforms for advertising lead business models
* 13:30= How are advertisers responding to changes in platforms? Does advertising for India 2.0 give a return on advertising spend?⚡️
* 16:50= Is the Indian industry growing fast enough? Are they making money?
* 23:00= Are local Indian internet platforms beginning to be competitive enough?
* 27:00= Excess infrastructure leads to innovation and new opportunities⚡️
* 29:30= Miten’s strategy/advice if he were to start a new company in the media/internet space
* 31:00= MX PLAYER disrupting a mostly subscription driven streaming industry - Could it pivot into a video commerce company? Could it disrupt the Hotstar/Amazon/Netflix monopoly🔮
* 34:50= Content producers vs content aggregators - who wins? Is the content market consolidating?⚡️
* 37:30= Closing thoughts
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For more than a decade now, I’ve read about media being in trouble. As a reporter at two leading newspapers and then as part of early teams at digital media startups, I’ve had some time to think about it. Below, I’m reproducing a piece I’d written earlier on Twitter because it’s relevant here. 
So we all know the media is in trouble because revenues from print advertising are falling in most markets. And that money is going to digital media. That’s a good thing right? More for digital media companies?! Well, no.
For digital media startups banking on that shift, the big payday will never come. Because digital advertising will never deliver the goods to you. Because you’re competing for the same ad dollars that big tech companies are competing for.
Most of the money in digital advertising goes to Google, Facebook, and platforms like Instagram with an endless supply of ad inventory. For these platforms, the cost of content is nearly zero. They like to keep it that way and invest technology to capture eyeballs and not in ‘content’ itself.
You, as a journalism startup, have inferior technology, no matter how much you try, and you have the cost of content to bear. On both counts, Big Tech will always win. You could point to a few profitable digital news sites and say that it’s working for them.
In the short run, it may work for a company. And some companies may even be able to grow big enough to invest in