A B-school recipe for a Bollywood blockbuster

Want to know the secret for making a hit Hindi film? Ask the students of the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies. As part of their annual business festival, Strategym, management students are researching and giving detailed analyses on topics such as what makes a film a success, how to decongest traffic, how to improve the country’s postal system, etc. In the past, several firms have picked up ideas from papers presented by students at this festival. 

“Our passion for cinema led us to choose this topic,” says Arpit Gupta, who is part of the team working on blockbuster Hindi films. 

“We are in the process of analysing what makes a movie a success or a failure in terms of the return on investment. We are taking into consideration all the internal (reputation of actors, budget, controversies, publicity budget, dialogue) and external (socio-economic conditions, status of women, unemployment, time of release) factors.”

The group of six students from the second-year MBA (marketing) course will be ready with their recipe for a hit film by next week. The paper will be presented in the last week of October during the two-day festival.

Starting from 1960, the students have taken at least five movies a year. They have already analysed more than 250 films for the project. “Take Amitabh Bachchan’s blockbuster Coolie,” said Gupta. “It worked in the 1980s as there was unemployment in society. Lajja and other films on women’s empowerment worked well because there were several cases of dowry deaths being reported at that time. Now these movies will not work.”

Apart from that, a group of students from the MBA (finance) stream are working on ‘mitigating traffic congestion in Mumbai by using waterways as a mode of transport.

“Many projects have been introduced to solve the traffic problem, but there has not been any major success,” said Nidhi Fatehpuria, a team member. “Hence we are evaluating the use of waterways as a means of transportation.”

The students will also look into the financial aspect of having such a facility. “We are in touch with financial firms like Cidco that invest in infrastructure and some resource material for the research has also been sought from the Mumbai Port Trust,” said Fatehpuria.