With India emerging as the key driver for pushing the global entertainment and media industry to $2 trillion by 2011, by dint of being the fastest growing market in the world, coupled by the fact that it needs professional management and research, there is a ?huge? scope for management students to take to the world of creative sciences.

This was the opinion of the speakers at the Entertainment and Media Conclave organised as part of Manfest 2008, the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow?s three-day annual business conclave, which was kicked off on Friday. The theme of Manfest this year, an event sponsored by the Financial

Express, is ?transforming thoughts, mobilising minds?.

Speaking at the conclave, Indrani Mukherji, CEO INX, stated that there was a huge gap in the television media, and there was space for many more players than the existing bigwigs like Star, Zee and Sahara. She also added that unlike earlier, when the industry was not quite able to match up to the pay packets of large corporate companies, salaries offered by the industry are now comparable to those offered by the FMCGs.

?There is every reason a manager from IIM should look towards joining a media company and there is space as well as a need for not only a well-researched news channel like the BBC in India today, but also a strong need for increasing the local media channels. Soon we will have more genre-wise, region-wise local news channels.?

Future Media CEO Partho Dasgupta stated that ?basically, it is a way to aggregate a lot of eyeballs so that it can sell it brands to reach that many eyeballs. With a normal working guy usually having around 4 hours in the day to give to books, television and other sources of media, it is a fight for a share of that woken up time.?

Further stating the importance and reach of the media, Dasgupta said, ?Media guides consumers through the plethora of brands in the market and today, it is a very lucrative career option for all those who are creative, love unstructured and diverse work, and like to do new things.?

Tarun Tripathi, director-marketing, MySpace.com, an IIM-L passout, who had a stint at YashRaj Flms before stepping into the new role at

Myspace, said, ?Less salary, no structure in work and a very set mindset of the stakeholders are some of the chief reasons why not many managers opt for a career in this industry.?

Others who attended the first day?s meet at the event included Narendra Ambwani, MD, Johnson & Johnson, Consumers and GVN Apparao, VP, Technology CTS.