A reality show with no winners

Cyrus Sahukar, host of The Assignment, talks about the business show which will air distinct stories of MNC executives trying to run home grown and domestic businesses.

This first reality show on any business channel in India will have no winners or losers. UTV Bloomberg’s The Assignment, will only air distinct stories of MNC executives trying to run home grown and domestic businesses, over 13 episodes.

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Explains the show’s host, Cyrus Sahukar, “What happens when you take a guy, who has worked by the book in his entire career and who even fights with his boss through emails, and put him in a local business, where irate costumers hold your collars each time you make a mistake? It’s a social experiment.”

Sahukar adds money couldn’t be an incentive for corporate executives to leave their jobs for a day and come on the show, since they have enough of it already. “It’s the experience of running local businesses. They’ve done well as businessmen, so they want to be successful at the grass root level too.”

But the contestants haven’t been entirely successful at their tasks. So you have MBAs trying to appease costumers who may not be happy with the service, or even try and please multiple people at the same time.

“One of the contestants, who was asked to run a dabbawala business, said that though he had seen a documentary on the business and studied its marketing reports, nothing could have prepared him for the actual operation,” Sahukar says.

Asked why Sahukar, who was a VJ with MTV for a decade, chose to do the business show, and he grins, “I like to be involved with quirky shows, be it a show where elders play children’s games (Hole In The Wall) or where we turn the lives of corporate execs around.”