The Titan of Tech

By Richard Horgan

How Not Going Hollywood Made Rohit Shukla

When Rohit Shukla arrived in Los Angeles in 1979 he had his sights set on becoming a Hollywood producer. So he tucked away his Masters degree in economics and political science from Cambridge University in England and enrolled at Loyola Marymount, where he studied film and television. He even got a few nibbles from The Industry.

Had the television show that was considering one of Shukla's class assignments as a potential script not been canceled, the 45-year-old Bombay native might well be working today for a Hollywood studio. As it stands, he's busy trying to figure out, as head of a Downtown-based tech networking group, how the studios are reacting to the rapid proliferation of new digital technologies.

"Our initial study on this matter, 'Hollywood Unstrung,' was released in 2000 and examined the effects of wireless technology on the industry," says Shukla, president and CEO of the technology alliance for Southern California, also known as larta. "The second report, 'Hollywood Unstrung II,' is much more specifically focused on digital cinema, digital distribution and other digital production realms."

While other regional technology industry networking groups such as VIC (sometimes called the Venice Interactive Community) have fallen on hard times, Shukla has built larta into a nonprofit behemoth, overseeing a wide array of programs that include everything from boot camps for entrepreneurs to funding for more than 400 Southern California start-ups.

As a result, more and more people are paying attention when Shukla produces special reports. Along with "Hollywood Unstrung II," which will be available November 15, there is "The 2002 Technology Innovation Index," which compares the technology economy of Southern California to other so-called "silicon plus" topologies of Austin, Boston, New York and San Francisco.

"The difficulty we're seeing right now is the fact that most of the Hollywood studios are more interested in exploiting new technologies as a way of saving cost, as opposed to embracing the prospect of technology to extend their product," says Shukla.

"But the problem is that the new technology is running through the studios and changing their own processes really fast, because they don't control it, they can't control it. They haven't come to accept that yet, because they still think that with this technology, as long as they keep a wall around it, nobody else can possibly use it and they can reap the benefits."

Documents like "Hollywood Unstrung" raised Shukla's public perception. The findings in the upcoming reports should continue to do so, especially because they sometimes run counter to what many people believe about entertainment.

According to "Hollywood Unstrung II," although the gaming industry has grown larger than the traditional entertainment industry by cultivating and catering to the consumer's hunger for interactivity, Hollywood continues to assume that the audience for its film and TV products is going to be static.

"The fact of the matter is that entertainment itself, in the context of a consciousness of a new user, has changed," says Shukla. "If you blend together virtual reality, artificial intelligence and a really strong current of storytelling and emotive power, you get something that is completely and totally new, for which the industry, as currently constructed, is not well-suited.

"This whole notion of holding back a certain amount and not exploring fully the limits of these new technologies mean that the Hollywood studios are not gaining true mind share of this new, slightly more standoffish consumer. They're still depending on a mass audience without recognizing the changes in the audience themselves."

Shukla and larta interviewed dozens of new media and film industry executives for "Hollywood Unstrung II." While some people seem unprepared, Shukla is quick to point out many key figures do understand the paradigm shifts at hand.

"Yair Landau at Sony gets it," says Shukla. "He has a great ability to understand where the world is shifting, moment to moment, from the channels of distribution, the middle men, the agents out in the field, the theatrical distributors, to the theater owners themselves.

"Chris Cookson at Warner Brothers is another extraordinary mind. Very few people even in the technology world can match his intuitive understanding of the changing demographic of both the audience and the industry itself."

According to "The 2002 Technology Innovation Index," the second expansive study being released by larta this fall, Hollywood--and particularly the new digitized economy of Hollywood--is one of the industries that helps Southern California support its claim of being the most diversified technology industry in the country. While the threat of runaway TV and film production continues to garner headlines, Shukla holds some differing views.

"There is not a hell of a lot you can do when it comes to the globalized direction of our world," laughs Shukla. "The truth of the matter is you cannot stop a process of cost reduction and cost containment.

"We're finding that when runaway production does occur, first of all the numbers are so ridiculously small as to be absurd to even talk about as a movement, whether it's Vancouver, Toronto or Bombay, India. Unless we legislate against it, as Rupert Murdoch is realizing to his great glee, the nerve center remains here in terms of both talent and ideas."

In between his studies at Cambridge and Loyola, Shukla spent a year in India working on a virtual MBA. Rather than follow specific academic courses, he worked within a large conglomerate and oversaw four consecutive three-month projects.

"It was very intense and very good preparation for my ultimate career in terms of business assistance," recalls Shukla. "It's what got me actually going when I started to make my mark here in Los Angeles."

Shukla understands the world of Hollywood, computers and the Internet from a pioneer's perspective. In the mid 1980s he started his own company, Interface Communications, and was involved in the first rollout of corporate PC and Novel communications networks.

"I used Interface as a platform essentially to build a business practice around smaller companies entering new markets overseas and establishing contact with various people they would be doing business with," says Shukla, whose clients included Virgin Music. "I sold the company to a business partner in 1989 and joined a consulting group which was working with the defense and aerospace industries."

The consulting group led to an initiative called the Presidents Round Table, which was a mentor group of CEOs in the defense and aerospace fields. That ultimately turned Shukla to his current career.

Since opening its doors in 1994, larta has put thousands of would-be entrepreneurs through the ringer to ensure that they are as prepared as possible for the vagaries of running a business. Thanks to Shukla's unique imprimatur, the reputation of larta's programs has grown steadily.

"By the end of the third session of the TechNet Ed five-day boot camp, the information started to gel," remembers Mike Goodman of AudioRamp.com. "At that point, I had the understanding and confidence to leave my day job and join a startup."

For anyone planning to solicit venture capital or angel investment for their business plan, Shukla has a few words of wisdom, post Internet bubble.

"No more snot-faced kids on the management team, okay?" says Shukla with a laugh. "It just doesn't work, because the snot-faced kids have only seen gratuitous growth. They've not seen the battles and hard-nosed stuff, and deprivation."

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