2017 in Review: Not a great year for radio in India: Nisha Narayanan

According to Nisha Narayanan, Chief Operating Officer, Red FM, there were three major game-changing developments in India’s radio sector in 2017:

• GST implementation
• Lingering effect of Demonetisation in H1
• Introduction of RERA (Real Estate Regulatory Act, 2016 is an Act of the Parliament of India which seeks to protect home-buyers as well as help boost investments in the real estate industry. The Act came into force on May 1, 2017.)

With the GST rollout, revenues from new clients declined. Moreover, due to decline in real estate, revenues were impacted. However, topline was supported by business coming in from the new stations launched. Thus, there was pressure on the topline due to these factors, while at the same time bottomline was affected due to huge capex owing to station launches, says Narayanan. 

Adding further, she says, “While the year 2017 was definitely not great, but Annus Horribilis would be too harsh a word for that.”