Reliance's Missed Call

Lately, I’ve been noticing that Anil Ambanis’ Reliance-ADAG has been building up a portfolio that other entertainment groups around the world could only dream of. If content is king, then distribution is god. Reliance-ADAG has both pieces that are critical to dominate the market. However, I feel they have not been able to do so effectively, almost to the point that each group is not taking the call of other groups within Reliance-ADAG.

Imagine if Universal Studios not only owned the production studio, but the movie theaters, the TV distribution platform, the radio platform, the cell phone platform, cyber cafes, etc… Well Reliance-ADAG has all the above and more, here is a brief list:
– bigadda.com – social networking site
– Adlab Films – production studio
– Adlab Cinemas – movie theater distribution platform
– Zapak.com – gaming portal
– Zapakmail.com – mail for the gaming portal?
– Big 92.7fm – radio platform
– Reliance Communications – mobile phones, broadband, Reliance World Cafes (formerly Web World)
– Reliance BlueMagic – upcoming launch of their Satellite TV service

bigadda.com the latest arrival into the social networking scene was launched this week in India amid a massive marketing campaign all over Bombay. This follows on the heels of an equally large marketing push recently from Zapakmail.com. But you would never know that both properties are owned by the same company, each seems so separate and disconnected from the other. The great thing about Google is you have one username/password for all their various services and everything flows from one to another with a consistent user interface (some call it boring). However, when Google adds a new service people are willing to try it, since it’s just a click away and don’t have to go through the process of filling out another userid and all that non-sense. I know portals are dead, but if anyone should have a portal it is Reliance, they have the platform and content to really drive traffic and create a central destination for all their properties.