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Our Bureau

Bangalore, Oct. 11 E-City Ventures, the real estate and cinema infrastructure arm of the Essel group, is aggressively eyeing the cinema infrastructure market.

It is looking to set up several cinema screens across the country, catering to both the lifestyle and value markets.

Currently, the company is operating around 140 cinema screens — 45 ‘premium’ screens (under the Fun Cinemas brand), 5 ‘value’ screens (under the Talkie Town brand for the budget conscious), and 90 digital screens (i.e. by digitising screens in various movie halls).

E-City Ventures operates in 11 cities including Chandigarh, Panipat, Mumbai, Gulbarga, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Agra.

Fun Cinemas caters to the premium segment and promises facilities such as service-on-seats, online booking, and a loyalty programme.

“But we will not be ignoring the value market. We are looking to cater to all consuming classes of cinema, not just the elitist,” said Mr Atul Goel, Chief Executive Officer, E-City Ventures

E-City Ventures plans to take its screen count to 1,500 by 2011, said Mr Goel. He was in the city to launch the company’s 15th ‘Fun Cinemas’ property in Sigma Mall. “We will set up 300 Fun Cinemas screens, 250 Talkie Town screens and 1,000 digital screens by 2011.”

Mr Goel said there was huge potential in ‘digitising’ existing screens across cinemas in the country. “We will hold the programming rights for the cinemas and the control of what movies will play. There is great potential in content leasing,” he said.

E-City Ventures is also into retail real estate business. It has developed four malls as of now (at a total area of 3 million sq ft) in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Lucknow.

The company is looking to develop retail space covering 20 million sq ft by 2011, said Mr Goel.

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E-City Ventures eyeing cine infrastructure biz

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