Adgully Exclusive | Want Aidem to be soul of media industry, says Raj Nayak

Raj Nayak, a media savant and a member of India's corporate aristocracy, recently ended his seven-year stint with NDTV ” he resigned as the head of the channel's advertising-sales and marketing-services arm, NDTV Media. Nayak is surging ahead with his mission to create an entity that will be the "soul of the media industry'. In an exclusive interaction with Adgully, he outlines the salient objectives of his mission.

To begin with, Adgully was curious about the name of his new business, Aidem Ventures. When we questioned him about that in an email, Nayak's response was a query: "What is the true reflection of MEDIA?" he said, adding a smiley to underscore his point. Next, he tackled the most rampant speculation, that NDTV was an equity partner in Aidem.

"NDTV is not an equity partner in Aidem," Nayak said emphatically. "This is a 100% independent company started by a group of passionate professionals, which includes me and some of my senior colleagues." As for the board of directors, Nayak said that it would be finalised soon. "We plan to bring aboard some independent directors who are very senior people from different industries," he said. "They will be the people who can add value to the business with their contacts and knowledge. We are very clear that we want Aidem Ventures to be seen as a truly professional company, which has management depth and bandwidth."

Nayak said that the rationale of Aidem had enthused some of his senior colleagues. "My colleagues and I had always nurtured an urge to create an organisation that could become the soul of the media industry," he said. "We want to be an aggregator of the best talent in the industry and create a unique business model that consolidates monetisation opportunities in every form of media." He said when he and some of his peers quit STAR TV in 2002, NDTV gave them the opportunity to be a part of a group of entrepreneurs when NDTV Media was launched. "We ran it as though it were an independent company, and I acknowledge that the NDTV management gave us complete freedom to do so," he said. "What we are doing now is taking the next big leap to be 100% entrepreneurs and we are doing this with the consent of Dr Prannoy Roy and NDTV."