Jakarta, Indonesia – Manoj Punjabi, Indonesia’s most commercially successful film producer, has won numerous awards over the course of a career spanning more than two decades.
But the billionaire founder and CEO of MD Entertainment does not hesitate when asked to choose his most treasured accolade.
“It is the one I won for Best Box Office Film at the Indonesian Box Office Movie Awards in 2016 because it was chosen by the viewers,” Punjabi told Al Jazeera in an interview at MD Entertainment’s headquarters in Jakarta.
“Even if I won an Oscar, it wouldn’t be the same because that is chosen by a jury and not by audiences.”
As the producer behind the highest-grossing Indonesian film of all time, KKN di Desa Penari, Punjabi is keenly aware that results count above all else in the entertainment business.
At the same time, the 52-year-old producer has developed a reputation for not shying away from taking risks.
Last year, Punjabi, the scion of a prominent Indian-Indonesian family with a long history of involvement in television and film, made what could be seen as the surprising decision to acquire an 80 percent stake in Indonesia’s NET.TV for some $100m.
By Punjabi’s own admission, the free-to-air television channel, which has a market share of less than 1.5 percent, had been “bleeding money” for years, racking up losses of about $250m over the previous decade.
Still, he saw an opportunity in TV in a world where entertainment options are increasingly dominated by paid-for streaming services such as Netflix, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime.
“First of all, Indonesians like watching for free. Paid TV does not work as well as other platforms, and it is very segmented,” Punjabi said.
“With free-to-air, everyone has access.”
Punjabi said economic and logistical factors in Indonesia, an archipelago of some 17,000 islands, have helped free-to-air TV to remain popular in the Southeast Asian country despite the rise of streaming services.
“In other countries, like India, you have a flats system with many people living in one building, so paid TV becomes very cheap. Over here, it is very scattered. With the infrastructure we have, free TV is very practical and easy. You just need an antenna, so it is more affordable and easily accessible,” he said.
“I thought free-to-air was a sunset market and platform, but in 2020, during COVID, I realised that free-to-air still exists and people are watching it. It is not a dying business, but a sunset business that has been stuck.”
James Guild, an assistant professor at Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia, or Indonesian International Islamic University (UIII), agreed that there is considerable potential for free-to-air TV to expand.
“There are a lot of places in Indonesia where people lack access to good wi-fi or cannot afford the monthly subscription for a streaming service like Vidio, or can only afford limited data plans and are unable to stream a lot of content,” Guild told Al Jazeera.
“Old-fashioned television is also still good business, [and] there is certainly still money to be made selling advertising on free-to-air television stations in Indonesia,” Guild said.
In 2022, Punjabi made history when he produced KKN di Desa Penari, which eclipsed Titanic to become the highest-grossing film ever shown in Indonesian cinemas.
To date, he has also produced seven of Indonesia’s 20 highest-grossing movies and has been widely credited with reviving interest in the genre of Indonesian horror.
Punjabi’s family started their entertainment business in Indonesia in the 1980s.
He recalls rushing home from school every day so he could watch the raw, unedited footage of the films his family were producing.
Punjabi’s grandfather emigrated to Indonesia following the partition of British India in 1947.
Like his father, he was born and raised in Indonesia.
“I’m Hindu, but I’m a proud Indonesian with an Indian background,” he said.
But in the late 1980s, when Punjabi was 17, everything came crashing down.
There was “a family crisis”, Punjabi said, which resulted in his parents selling their home and “adjusting their lifestyle”.
“I think my ambition came from that. I never wanted to be like that again. Because you have a certain standard, and then you go down. It hurts and you feel it,” he said.
After brief stints working at a pulp and paper factory and a garment factory, Punjabi founded MD Entertainment in 2002.
In 2024, he was ranked 34th on Forbes’ list of Indonesia’s 50 richest people, with an estimated net worth of more than $1.5bn.
“When you are on that list, you feel a kind of pressure, but in a good way,” Punjabi said.
“To be at that stage, you are thankful, but you have to be more tough, and that is tiring. So that list makes me feel pressured in that way, it makes me motivated to do better, and I hope it doesn’t stop here.”
Asked about his legacy, Punjabi said he hopes that MD Entertainment will still be around in a century and will branch out beyond Indonesia.
“How I am going to do it is still in the pipeline, but there is something iconic that I want to offer audiences, not just in Indonesia or Southeast Asia,” he said.
When it comes to sources of inspiration, Punjabi listed Titanic, Slumdog Millionaire, My Beautiful Life, The Dark Knight, and Casino Royale among his favourite films.
“I’m obsessed with James Bond and Die Hard. I am an action freak, and those are the movies that I kept watching. I’ve watched the James Bond movies 50 to 70 times, particularly You Only Live Twice and Octopussy from the 1960s. Casino Royale blew my mind,” he said.
As for NET.TV., now called MD TV, Punjabi has ambitious plans to raise the quality of free-to-air TV, which has historically not had the best reputation.
“I want to change the game in terms of how we tell stories, be it movies, soap operas or series,” he said.
Punjabi said free-to-air television in Indonesia has often suffered from poor lighting, sets and locations, cliched narratives, and heavy-handed product placement.
“I want to change the look and the storytelling. People think the quality is going down, but with my concept, I hope it will bring in audiences,” he said.
“That is my challenge, and I choose to accept it.”