Her week never ends. You will find the Balaji head in her office on Sundays too.

"Now that I have a public limited company in television industry, I will never experiment and give something that the public will lampoon me about. I have to keep up the trust," she tells indiantelevision.com's Vickey Lalwani, when he meets her for an interview.

Excerpts:

Please outline your role in Balaji Telefilms.
From day one, I have been involved with many things. Handling cash, handling production and management, co-ordinating with people, deciding the budgets, meeting the channel heads regarding the budgets. The list is too long.

And now?
The list is longer. Ever since we went public, I have to be an analyst. I have to sit in the Annual General Meeting and check the Annual Report. More importantly, I have to attend to all the calls, emails and letters, which we get from our investors from outside India. These people have shares worth lakhs of rupees and they constantly need to be convinced that we are doing well. Even they monitor our TRPs (laughs). A little drop and they panic. God forbid if there is some controversy in a serial, they panic even more.

Plus, I even look into the collections coming in from the channels. I have people, but the business has expanded by such an enormous magnitude that I can't afford to sit at home even for a day. There are no Sundays in my calendar. I am in the office by 2 pm every day and I don't come home before 9.30 pm at the earliest.

How was the decision to go public taken?
This was my husband's decision. He always had this dream that Ekta should own a huge company in the television industry. He thought that if we go public, we would be able to garner funds to make even 20 shows at the same time. Touch wood, his dream has been realized. Today, we have the money and the people. Additionally, rather wisely, we have succeeded in building our own studios, which provide us with 14-16 sets to operate at the same time (pauses).

Please continue.
As on date, we have five serials in Telugu, four in Kannada, six on air presently, and six more to come up by October (dailies). The studios play a big role in the fact that we are able to dish out so much of quantity without losing on quality. If it is cost-effective for me, it is beneficial to the artistes too. It saves them a lot of trouble. The studios are well equipped with almost all the requirements of the serials being shot there. Generally, shifting is not required. Outdoor scenes are, of course, a different story.