IT WAS AN ANNOYED tweet from author Salman Rushdie on Jan. 20 that brought Sanjoy Roy, the business brain behind the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), into the limelight. With Muslim hardliners protesting the invitation to the author of The Satanic Verses, Rushdie found himself denied entry, even a video conference. “Willie [author William Dalrymple], Sanjoy, why did this happen?” Rushdie tweeted.
Until then, few knew of Roy’s role in the JLF. But to festival regulars, he is a familiar sight—ubiquitous in his conspicuous shoulder-length silver mane. Roy hardly spoke at the various events and never gave interviews; he was never seen as the face of the festival. Authors William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale, as festival directors, were the ones identified with the JLF. At best, Roy was the go-to person for logistics. Rushdie, ultimately, didn’t go due to mounting pressure from political parties and the government’s security agencies.
“It [the spotlight on him] was never meant to happen this way,” says Roy, managing director of Teamwork, which organises festivals and promotes live arts and culture, and has become a coveted brand in the world of literary fests. The JLF, Asia’s largest literary festival, which attracted over a lakh visitors this year, is the product of a memorandum of understanding between Teamwork and the Jaipur Virasat Foundation, a non-government organisation working with Rajasthan’s artistes and craftspeople. And Roy has been “happy to stay in the background”. He says: “It’s just that this year there was no choice but to come to the forefront.”
There’s a lot happening to the JLF. With the festival growing at about 100% year on year in sponsorship revenue and attendance since 2006, there is now talk of a new holding company though the names of the stakeholders are not known.
Teamwork is expected to have a large stake because of its investments in the festival (Rs 5.2 crore this year, including capital investment). The JLF contributed around 50% of Teamwork’s annual revenue of around $2 million (Rs 11 crore) in India in the last fiscal. Teamwork’s revenue from its international festivals in 21 cities across 11 countries is another $2 million—it has locally registered companies with partners in Britain, South Africa, Hong Kong, and Canada.
Though JLF’s contribution to Teamwork’s profits of Rs 70 lakh in FY12 is “negligible” (also because the sponsorship revenue of Rs 5.3 crore barely exceeded its cost), it is expected to increase incrementally. “We signed many sponsorship deals when JLF was nowhere close to this size. Next year, many of these will be up for review and the amounts will change,” says Roy.
The secret of Roy’s success, according to Hemali Sodhi, head of marketing at Penguin India, is his ability to bring diverse elements together and create an international-class property for the first time in India.
“India has big book events—such as the Kolkata and Delhi book fairs—but there was nothing of international scale and recognition,” says Sodhi. “Roy became the bridge between well-known authors and sponsors who had never been associated with a literary festival before. He also reached out to the media around the world. And he was the glue that kept it all together.”
Roy says his strategy has been to cross-market his brands. “Each festival is promoted at every other festival in the world,” he says. What’s more, the JLF is now successful enough to be a Harvard Business School case study.
TEAMWORK'S SUCCESS stems from two critical decisions Roy made. In 1995, at a time when television was just starting to grow in India and Teamwork Films had 14 shows, such as Tol Mol Ke Bol, running on various channels, Roy decided to move out of the industry. Promoting the arts seemed more exciting and even his employees agreed that TV production was getting boring. “Plus, we nearly went bankrupt. The channels refused to clear dues and there was complete chaos,” he recalls.
In retrospect, that was a good thing because Teamwork went on to invent a global business model for festivals promoting art and culture, till then the domain of not-for-profit organisations and the government. It showed that private players could be successful in the space. “We built an equitable enterprise based on the cultural prowess of India,” says Roy.
But it all happened by accident, says Roy, insisting that his hairstyle played a significant role in attracting attention at festivals around the world. It helped him create a brand. “When we gave up TV, I also started growing my hair. My son had told me I couldn’t attend parent-teacher meetings if I had long hair. That decided it. I grew my hair to avoid those meetings. And at our first international event showcasing Indian culture at the Edinburgh festival in 1999, they noticed this Indian man with long white hair. I know it sounds funny, but many people felt I knew something special!”
One of Roy’s first collaborators on the international stage was Nelson Fernandez, who was director of performing arts at Visiting Arts, a government-funded organisation for presentation of international arts in Britain. That was in 1999 at the Edinburgh festival. Fernandez now runs his own company, NFA International Arts and Culture.
Says Fernandez: “Sanjoy understood the need to engage with a variety of international audiences for maximum impact. He did not ignore the diaspora, but was clear in his desire to engage with the broadest possible spectrum of people and cultures.”
Indeed, in all its international festivals, Teamwork’s strategy has been to involve people from the mainstream. “Indian festivals overseas have always engaged the diaspora. But we believed our long-term success depended on mainstream acceptance. In Durban, our festival [the Shared History Festival] was championed by mainstream South Africans well before the Indians there.”
Teamwork has now become the biggest, most organised, and diversified promoter of the arts in India. When Britain’s Hay Festival of Literature and Arts came to India for the first time two years ago, it chose Teamwork as a partner and helped it create a network for Indian arts abroad, from New Zealand to Canada.
Teamwork’s latest project is a multi-city children’s literary festival called Kahaani, which kicked off in April in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district—often in the news these days due to Maoist attacks.
But along with fame come brickbats: Everything from the choice of sponsors to the veto on Rushdie’s appearance has been questioned. “We could not have taken the risk of physical harm to thousands of people, including the elderly and children,” Roy says about the Rushdie saga.
For the rest of his detractors, he has a story. Early one morning, Roy spotted security officials stopping a shabbily dressed man with a little boy from entering JLF this year. Roy told them to let the two in (JLF is open to all, free of cost) and asked the man where he came from. “The man said he slept on a street nearby and had heard that stories were told at the fest and that it was free. He said, ‘I can’t afford schooling or books for my boy so I thought if he heard some stories, maybe he would learn something.’ That’s what makes it all worthwhile. That’s why we will never restrict admission.”
