Born in Delhi and brought up in Jaipur, Deepak Vohra did his Master in Humanities while actively pursuing hobbies like music, sports and adventure tours. Few know that he is actually a National-level athlete and can play almost all musical instruments. He likes singing and emceeing and he talked to agencyfaqs! as CEO of Rajasthan Patrika's Tadka 95 FM.

Q.How long does your association with radio go? Which are the different assignments you have handled?
A.My direct association with radio has been for about one year, but I was earlier associated with AIR as casual announcer and programmer, have done various live interviews of celebrities for around 5 years.

Apart from that I have been involved in various assignments, to the extent I am considered as a 'launch-pad’ for my organization. Before FM, I had already launched several new products for Rajasthan Patrika like yellow pages, outdoor division, evening newspaper and some events.

Q. What makes you believe so much in small town radio stations to deliver?
A. Entertainment and information is something omnipresent and can't be restricted to small or big towns - it has no boundaries.

Q. Which are the small towns to look out for?
A. All towns having a population of 5 lakh+ can be considered potential. That's because only such a population can make the station viable.

Q.What are the advantages and disadvantages you have over pan-India networks?
A. This is a tricky one but yes, larger networks score over us because of add-on facilities in commercial spots, tie-ups with music companies and single software operations.

Q.What do you think about the radio/media consumption?
A. It's gaining mass though still in the infancy stage. But I have a strong feeling it will work. In comparison to the global scenario, listeners are fewer in number but are gradually increasing - and will continue to do so if we deliver good contents, directly affecting their daily life.

Q. Accordingly, how do you design your segmentation, programming and elements of marketing?
A. Now that's a trade secret!

Q. What do local advertisers want, which is different from what pan-India advertisers are looking for? What 'value' do they seek? Are they equally or more demanding?
A. Clients are same all over but yes, we get better rates while dealing with local clients. Demands are high as we are trying to educate clients about radio being a strong and supportive medium - which increases demands but gradually it shall become the same across India.

Local advertisers are not familiar with the deliverables but since we are educating them we need to give them good bargains to get them on board.

Q. What is the ratio of sales between local and national advertisers?
Where are your sales offices located?
A. We are No. 1 when it comes to local sales; we are trying to get some good deals from corporate. We have our offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Banglore, Chennai, Ahemdabad, Chandigarh, Bhopal, Indore and Surat apart from 18 offices in Rajasthan.

Q. Which other cities/small towns are you moving to next, and by when?
A. Udaipur, Kota, Ajmer, Bikaner and Raipur - within one month.

Q. What is the kind of research that you need to do before entering a market with such starkly different demographics and psychographics?
A. Demarcation of TG and SEC plays an important role but when it comes to Jaipur it is the same as metros. For other smaller towns we need to be more city-centric, more local and talking to their level.

Q. How do you define 'niche' and 'differentiation'?
A. At this point in time, talking about 'niche' is of no use as radio has to make a lot of noise and travel a lot of distance before getting there.

Q. Are you affected by the measurement issues being haggled over by bigger players?
A. To some extent, yes. We all need to work on that. Some are with IMRB some with RAM - it should not be like that and we should move to one currency.

Q. How do you promise to deliver or demonstrate value to clients?
A. Trade secret again!

Q. Do you have any kind of numbers to highlight Tadka's performance?
A. The kind of SMS and phone calls we are getting on daily basis talks about the popularity of TADKA. Every day we get approximate 4,000 to 5,000 SMSes and about 900 to 1,000 calls.

Q. What are the difficulties one faces in starting a station in a small town? How does one deal with them?
A. Getting the right people is the basic problem, otherwise one can do it. We could to talk to the music industry and negotiate on the really high royalties.

Q.What's your one wish for radio (in India)?
A. Listenership increases to 100 per cent …and I am keeping my fingers crossed!

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