The Hindu Business Line : K Sera Sera plans Rs 250-cr investment

Silver screen plans
Signs up with leading directors including David Dhawan, Abbas Mastan
Expects topline to grow 100 per cent
Eyes regional film production space as well

Mumbai , March 30

K Sera Sera Productions Ltd said it plans to invest Rs 250 crore to produce 20 Hindi movies over the next two years.

The film production and television content maker said it has signed on with leading Hindi film directors for these projects.

"We have been looking at aggressively scaling up," Mr Parag Sanghavi, Managing Director, K Sera Sera, said. The company has signed on directors including David Dhawan, Abbas Mastan, Priyadarshan, Sudhir Mishra, Vipul Shah and Anubhav Sinha.

Produce more films

"We plan to produce more than 20 films which will be released by March 2008. The first of these films will go on the floor soon," Mr Sanghavi said.

According to him, this will make K Sera Sera the single biggest player in the Hindi movies business in terms of volume of output and should see its topline grow at over 100 per cent year on year in 2006-07 and 2007-08. The bottomline is also expected to be on an upward curve.

"As we look to aggressively scale up we are keen to consolidate our position by emerging as the first studio with broad based creative strengths," Mr Sanghavi said. "We are offering a platform to all kinds of creative talent across all genres. The response from the creative fraternity has been outstanding," he added.

Regional space

The company also announced plans to move into the regional film production space in the near future.

The company had recently gone in for a follow-on public issue and raised Rs 34 crore by issuing 50 lakh shares at Rs 68 per share.

Shares of K Sera Sera ended higher by Rs 1.70 or 3.11 per cent at Rs 56.45 on Thursday on the BSE.

The company's recent release Malamaal Weekly, directed by Priyadarshan, has achieved revenues of Rs 4 crore. The film was released with 150 prints.