He is business-like, sharp and very well-spoken. But humility is not one of his virtues. It needn’t be. For Deepak Shourie, managing director of Discovery Networks, has much to be proud of. As head of the American television company’s India business that operates three channels ? Discovery, Animal Planet and Travel & Living ? Shourie scripted its financial turnaround after he took charge in 2001. He doesn’t talk numbers but claims that the company is profitable. He’s equally proud of Outlook, the Raheja group magazine he launched as publisher 10 years ago. It challenged India Today’s monopoly, he says.

Shourie’s marketing triumphs in media companies are well known. At the Living Media group between 1988 and 1994, he helped established its first video news magazine News Track as a brand followed by Music Today and later its fortnightly magazine Business Today. As executive president at the Birla-owned newspaper, Hindustan Times, he dropped the cover price to beat rival The Times of India at its own game.

What is not known, however, is that the economics graduate from St Stephens College in Delhi started out with a non-media company ? Metal Box ? as a management trainee. After an eight-year stint at the packaging multinational, he joined Cadbury’s to handle its government affairs.

“Those were the days of the licence raj and we were dealing with the government on a day-to-day basis,” he says. “Once the company got a notice for manufacturing more Bournvita than what was stipulated on its licence. The Reserve Bank of India had sent the warning. I sorted that out.”

“The times were tough as everything was controlled. But I made it clear that I was an applicant not a supplicant,” says Shourie. And that’s the attitude he still wears on his sleeve. He likes a free hand in his job and is known to quit if acute differences crop up with the promoters. His employees say that he’s a very hard taskmaster. It’s true.

On his part, Shourie delivered tremendous sales growth at Cadbury’s. From government relations in Delhi he was moved to head marketing in Mumbai. “I was a non-MBA while everyone in my team was one. All, barring one person, quit,” he recalls. Unfazed, Shourie changed the advertising campaign and product packaging. “We pruned the number of brands as well and concentrated our sales and marketing efforts in the metros and big cities,” he says. This resulted in doubling sales.

Does the lack of an MBA degree pose a problem? “Not really. But then I was living in a different time. Not many people were innovating,” he says. He doesn’t attribute his success to any single lucky break. It’s all a question of ideas, he says. And some straight talking, perhaps.

At Kothari General Foods, for instance, he didn’t hesitate before telling the MNC’s Singapore-based boss that their products wouldn’t work in India.

But straight talking is not always appreciated. Not many of his former colleagues at Discovery were pleased when he scrapped the channel’s major quiz initiative. “Quiz has a connotation of education and that is what I didn’t want Discovery to be associated with. It limited its viewership,” says Shourie.

To be fair, Shourie admits that Discovery was already well known when he joined. However, it was positioned as a children’s education brand. By changing the programming mix, he managed to expand its audience base. “A channel must deliver relevant eyeballs to the advertisers,” he says. Needless to say, a host of major advertisers such as Nokia, IBM, Samsung, HP, Hindustan Lever, Johnson & Johnson and Britannia have come on board.

At Discovery, Shourie is also proud of initiating the One Alliance platform, a distribution joint venture with Sony Entertainment Television. Today, One Alliance distributes the three Discovery channels, the Sony bouquet, the NDTV channels, Ten Sports, MTV and Nickelodeon.

Will he introduce more channels in India? Not unless he sees an opportunity. “I spotted the trend that people wanted to go upscale in travelling. And that there was a small number of viewers who were looking for quality goods and services,” he says. This led to the launch of Travel & Living in October 2004.

Not many know that the younger son of the famous consumer activist, the late Hari Dev Shourie and brother of former communications and disinvestment minister Arun Shourie, also went to the National Defence Academy (NDA). “But I realised it was not for me and I resigned,” he smiles. Clearly, he’s better at marketing wars in the consumer space.

As told to Shuchi Bansal in New Delhi