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Big Music & Home eyes 40 per cent share in home entertainment
Pradipta Mukherjee / Kolkata December 31, 2007 Reliance ADAG's Big
Music and Home Entertainment is looking at garnering close to 40 per cent
market share of home and music entertainment business in India.It is
also eyeing Hollywood releases to capture at least 50 per cent market share
of all the new releases.The Hindi home entertainment market is estimated
at Rs 650 crore at present and is expected to grow to Rs 3,000 crore in the
next five years.The music industry in India is estimated at Rs 900 crore
right now, which is expected to double year on year on the back of mobile
music downloads catching up.Speaking to Business Standard, Kulmeet
Makkar, chief executive officer of Big Music and Home Entertainment said,
"We are looking at obtaining home video rights for about 50 Hindi films of
200 Hindi movies released every year. We are also looking at acquiring music
album rights for these films."The company would leverage its marketing
expertise through its radio station (BIG FM), mobile (Reliance
Communications) as well as produce original movies through its Big Motion
Pictures.The company has also entered into a strategic alliance with
Universal Pictures International as exclusive licensee for India.As a
part of the deal, Big Music and Home Entertainment will market and
distribute Universal's home video products in India.Universal has over
2000 titles and 200 Hollywood titles which Big Entertainment is going to
market and distribute in India.It is also dubbing the content in Hindi,
Tamil, Telegu, and other languages."For instance, we are dubbing the
entire Barbie Doll series in Hindi for CDs and DVDs," said Makkar.In
music, Reliance entertainment also plans to acquire rights of close to 35
non-filmy Hindi music albums. According to market estimates, India releases
some 100-odd non-filmy music albums per year.At present, the biggest
players in home video include Moser Baer, Shemaroo, Eros, and Eagle, among
others."The competition is mainly with several regional home video label
owners," said Makkar.The company is therefore planning to acquire home
video rights from local players for Bengali, Tamil, Telegu, Punjabi and
Marathi languages.The company is also setting up regional offices for
localised content development. It inaugurated its Kolkata office recently
and would open its Chennai office in January.Kolkata is estimated to
have close to 15 local home video label-owners while South India has almost
80 label-owners."In addition to movies and music, we are planning to
create several niche categories for home videos. For instance, we would
create CDs and DVDs on cooking lessons, fashion, and also celebrity life and
talk shows that would interest people," Makkar said.In music, the
company is also planning to promote local artists and music bands.For
original content creation, the company has signed Jagjit Singh, Asha Bhonsle
and A R Rahman for exclusive music videos and albums.
--
regards,
Vithur
A.R.RAHMAN - THE ABODE OF DIVINE MUSIC
