One of the most exciting sectors in corporate venturing right now is the media business. In recent times, media groups have become the most common new entrants into corporate venturing across all the sectors we cover.
The reasons for this are fairly clear, the advent of the smartphone and the popularity of tablets have rocket-charged new media businesses’ ability to spring to phenomenal success over-night, creating the potential for incumbents to be disrupted and also providing the opportunity for them to find new profitable business lines. This month, we will be publishing a report, sponsored by US-based law firm Baker Botts, which looks at the changes going on in the media business and the future of the sector.
Corporate venturing interest in the sector may prick up even more, after the sector’s giants and outsiders digest the news we report today. US and Netherlands-based information and measurement group Nielsen’s corporate venturing unit has signed up a subsidiary of Tata Industries, which invests in new and high-technology businesses for India-based Tata Group, which has been one of the great emerging market success stories of modern times.
The deal highlights a trend remarked on by many of the people I spoke with for the report – all corporations nowadays are media businesses. An industrial conglomerate like Tata investing in a Nielsen corporate venturing fund will now be able to understand better the latest innovative technologies triggering changes in the “measurement of media”.
Many business people are rubbing their hands at what the huge supply of data provided by smartphone will mean in terms of a newfound understanding of consumers. This is likely to change all of media and everything else as well and many expect this to generate huge profits. Of course, especially in light of the recent National Security Agency scandal, these changes are also beginning to trigger concern in some quarters – with someone interviewed by the Financial Times last week labelling what is going on as “the wild data west”.
Tata appears to have understood these changes will be fundamental to all business going forward, and by allying itself with Nielsen, it will have another eye with which it can understand the future. Watch this space.