Q&A: Emerald Media's Paul Aiello

Q: How did Emerald Media begin, and what was the platform’s original thesis?

A: Our platform started as CA Media in 2010 in partnership with Peter Chernin, who was a former COO of News Corp and founded The Chernin Group (TCG). I had been a TMT banker at Morgan Stanley, and then CEO of Star TV in Asia for News Corp. Rajesh Kamat, my fellow managing director, had worked at Star TV and then went on to start Endemol Shine India, the biggest TV production house in India, and launched Colors, a phenomenally successful TV station in India. We started investing together with TCG, and then in 2015 KKR committed $300 million and we rebranded as Emerald Media. We have deep operating backgrounds in media and digital media, coupled with broader industry knowledge. I think that’s an important element to our strategy, because we’re bringing not just the $20-75 million that we invest per deal, but also operating expertise. We see ourselves as financial investors that are also quasi-strategic investors.

Q: Recent investments have moved away from your initial media focus. Why have you broadened your scope?

A: The way the world has evolved, knowledge of media is coupled to any business that’s using technology for disruption and for new and emerging business models. So while our first wave of investmnts, before the KKR partnership, were geared toward traditional media, digital media, and IP-related businesses, of our five investments with KKR so far, only [Indian animation studio] Cosmos-Maya could be considered strictrly a traditional media deal. We own a large minority stake in YuppTV, a Netflix-like site for Indian content around the world. We invested in Amagi, which uses cloud solutions to help media companies solve their distribution issues and build out their technologies. And we also hold a meaningful minority stake in aCommerce, an e-commerce enabler in Southeast Asia.

Q: What benefit can an investor with media experience bring to a technology company?

A: There are a lot of business models emerging that we find ourselves very involved in. When we started with TCG eight years ago, we did not envisage this, because frankly, we just didn't know. But by the time we teamed up with KKR almost three years ago, we had done a lot of learning. We saw where the world was going, and how our skillset and domain knowledge could be relevant, and not just in the traditional types of assets that we originally came from. In the case of aCommerce, I’m not a fulfillment expert, but when you look at demand generation  – working with brands, developing their websites, and managing data and the knowledge of their consumers – that absolutely resonates with media. Media, content, and IP are core to the business models of all the large tech ecosystem companies as a means to get more eyeballs and keep them, and the same can be said of emerging Asian tech companies like Go-Jek. The business models are becoming more integrated, and there are a lot of areas where we can add value.

Q: What other integration opportunities have you seen?

A: Our biggest single investment is in Global Sports Commerce (GSC) in Singapore, to which we committed $80 million. GSC, at its heart, is a technology company grounded in media knowledge. It provides solutions for stadiums and leagues to interact with fans, and while it started with electronic signage, it’s migrated to other technologies for engagement. It’s a company that we’ve been following for a long time, and while it’s not a broadcaster or a cable company, it’s very much in the media ecosystem. One of our focuses is on attractability and social media connectivity for live events, and that’s exactly where a company like GSC fits.

Q: Can this shift toward technology benefit more traditional media companies in your portfolio?

A: Cosmos-Maya is a traditional animation company, with IP, and a lot of its customers are traditional broadcasters. But an increasing number of customers are online media players, and you need technologies and strategies to serve them. We have found some great synergies within our group portfolio companies. For instance, Cosmos-Maya is working with YuppTV, so in addition to Bollywood and regional Indian films and TV, it now has animation to share with the global Indian community. While this is a more local, traditional business than the others we’ve invested in recently, there are still global extensions and technologies that we can bring.

Q: How have you built up your team’s expertise to complement the strategy?

A: We’ve always been very lean, and we want to maintain our domain excellence and our understanding of media, although some of our senior executives now have more experience in telecom and technology. While we’re not complete experts in many technology areas, for the areas that we’ve invested in we do feel very comfortable with the technologies and applications around how these businesses can scale and grow. There are some technology businesses, like hardware, where we don’t have a lot of domain knowledge and can’t add much value. But the ecosystem in consumer tech and business-to-business is very broad, and we understand the technologies and how they can benefit our companies.

Q: What sets Emerald Media apart from other investors working in the sector?

A: There are a lot of smart people looking at the same areas, and a lot of people with industry expertise that bring either a technology background or a VC background. But I feel we have good differentiation in what we do – one thing that’s missing in Asia is people with actual operating experience, converting exciting companies that are at stage A or B to successful, scaled businesses. That’s an area we understand quite well. I think that combination of industry knowledge and scale understanding is really important. But first and foremost, we love to back great promoters and management teams that have meaningful vested interest in the business, so that we’re completely aligned, which is of course critical.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• South Asia
• Media
• Technology
• Consumer
• GPs
• India
• Singapore
• KKR
• TMT
• professional services