Percept Sports and Entertainment, the B-T-L division of the Percept group has consolidated its capitalized billings at over INR 200 crores in FY’15. This follows the Group’s move to integrate all the Marketing Communications Services in July 2014 under one entity called ‘Percept One’ with an aim to provide 360-degree, integrated marcom solutions to its stakeholders. Percept One currently includes Percept/H, Hakuhodo Percept, H&H Communications, IBD India, MASH Advertising, Percept Gulf, I-AM, Allied Media, Percept Out-Of-Home, Percept Profile and Percept Sports & Entertainment (viz. Activations, Entertainment, Sport, Talent, Weddings SBUs).
Sanjay Shukla who has earlier heading the Percept Sports and Entertainment Division took over the reins of COO – Percept One in April 2015. Talking about this development, Sanjay Shukla, COO, Percept One said, “Further change was on the anvil as clients were skewing for a 360 degree solution provider. Percept as a group was already into marcom solutions but group companies and divisions were working independently and not taking advantage of an integrated offering. So we decided to create a singular identity and Percept One was born, offering a holistic one-stop-shop for stakeholders.”
Commenting on the aggregated size of Percept One, now with this consolidation amongst group companies, Sanjay added, “The capitalized billing of Percept One in the last financial year (2015) was INR 2,050 crores. The capitalized billing of Percept Sports and Entertainment was over 200 crores, which includes all the Below-the-Line but excludes our assets of Percept Live including IPs like Sunburn, Percept Pictures, Percept Art and Tyger Productions."
The targeted growth of Percept One for FY’16 is 25% and projected capitalized billings pegged for 2015-16 at INR 2,500 crores. As a consolidated unit, the idea is to leverage the 250 clients (from across the various Percept divisions) for a total marcom offering, which is already close to 70% of the total Percept group's business. Experiential marketing and digital are the future focal growth areas that are expected to bring in a large chunk of the growth and revenue.
The consolidation of 22 companies to about 8-9 divisions is expected to make the work more seamless, translating into greater profitability. While the business will be headed by the respective business heads, Shukla will be Chief Operating Officer for Percept One handling the overall P&L.
Commenting more specifically on the focus areas within experiential marketing, Sanjay Shukla elaborated, “Sports is something we want to re-focus on. We want to get back into boxing like we used to do. In the Talent division, we no longer have exclusively managed Talent, but many brand deals and Talent tie-ups are done through Percept Edge, which we look to further enhance.”
Other Percept group companies not included under Percept One are Percept Live owning IPs such as Sunburn, Bollyboom, Windsong, FLY; Percept Pictures – Ad Films & Feature Film assets; Percept Art; and Tyger Productions.