Anil Ambani is pushing hard the home video business to complete his presence in movie production, exhibition and broadcasting business.
Big Music and Home Entertainment is targeting a revenue of Rs 1 billion by the end of this fiscal. The company has signed up four big Hollywood studios - Warner Bros, Universal, Paramount and DreamWorks SKG - for home video distribution, controlling 60 per cent of Hollywood content. The content strategy is also to grab rights for big ticket Bollywood movies.
In an interview with Gaurav Laghate, Big Music and Home Entertainment CEO talks about the company's growth plans.
Excerpts:
Why is the home video market still to explode despite the entry of several players?
In India, this figure is not even six to seven per cent. Due to several reasons including piracy, home video is a very small segment. India is purely a theatrical dominated movie market. |
|
How does India shift to a strong home video market?
The hardware penetration of VCDs and DVDs is still not good. Home video companies also need to spend more money on marketing and distribution. This is beginning to happen and we will grow exponentially in the next few years. There are estimates that the Rs 8.3 billion market will grow to a size of Rs 15 billion by 2011-12.
There is also a much disorganised movie rental market which is again driven by a high level of piracy. Only recently large operators like Bigflix, Seventymm and Nimbus have come up. This is good news for the sector as we will have more organised players in the rental business. |
|
Isn't Bollywood still dominating the home video business? |
|
Will the home video market benefit from increased competition?
So far, the video market has not been handled in an organised way. There was a 16-18 week window between the theatrical and home video release of a movie. Obviously, that window is shrinking now and consumers are getting to watch films through the home video chain much earlier.
There is also better and more filmed content coming in as movie production companies are scaling up. The content availability on home video will, thus, be more. |
|
With prices dropping to the bottom of the pit, are businesses becoming unviable?
Reliance also believes in mass distribution at a good and affordable price. Our strategy is to have various segments of content. We believe in premium content.
For Hollywood content distribution in India, we have partnered with four studios - Warner Bros, Paramount, DreamWorks SKG and Universal. We have acquired rights of Ironman, Hulk, Babe, Indiana Jones, Kung Fu Panda, The Dark Knight, Sex and the City, Mama Mia, among others. We are launching these films by January.
We believe in creating or acquiring content which is premium, then localising it, and selling it at an affordable price. Indiana Jones in English, for example, will be sold with great packaging, value-added content and at a price which the target audience will not mind to pay.
We will release the dubbed version in different languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. The pricing will be around one-third of the English version content. We want to disrupt the market with our content, distribution and aggressive marketing. We will be promoting home video content as if we are marketing the film. We will not just be playing the pricing game. Pricing doesn't drive the business, quality does. |
|
|
|
Will you have a differential pricing model? |
|
What kind of promotions are you planning? |
|
You have signed licensing deals with four major studios which were with Saregama. You also were a part of Saregama at that time… |
|
Do you have given a minimum guarantee (MG) or revenue share arrangement with the studios? |
|
How much will the home video segment contribute to Big Music and Home Entertainment?
We have Big Music, Big Home Video, Big Talent, and Big Music Publishing under the same company.
The business model of Big Music Publishing will be announced soon while we have already rolled out Big Talent. |
|
What is the size of the music industry?
Piracy is hurting digital sales with file sharing, iPods etc. There is also leakage as the licensing business is not yet formalised. |
|
What is the content strategy for the company?
So far as music goes, Bollywood would still be the driver content. The new model which we are working on is artist management - we work with them not just on the music, but also build them as brands. We have signed Hard Kaur not only for albums and films; she will also be with us for live performances, events, brand endorsements, appearances on TV and radio.
As a group, we can drive on the synergies. We can put an artist on Big FM or on our TV channels when they roll out. We also have Reliance mobile, Zapak and Big Pictures where we can promote them. |