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Purvita Chatterjee

Mumbai, Oct. 15 Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) is planning to sign exclusive deals with Reliance Retail to sell its DVDs and VCDs.

Having set up special counters at the Reliance Mart in Ahmedabad recently, Sony now intends bagging space at its other formats such as Reliance Digital and its speciality stores for books, music and movies.

Mr N. Muthuram, Country Manager, SPHE, told Business Line, “There will be special schemes and tie-ups with Reliance Retail as its stores are rolling out fast across the country. Organised retail is going to be an opportunity for us.”

With plans of bringing out exclusive titles just for Reliance Retail stores, Sony Pictures is expecting large volumes from the retailer’s large format stores. As Mr Muthuram says, “Currently, Reliance Retail is possibly our biggest client if you count the number of footfalls at its stores. We are looking at having schemes and occasion-based promotions at its stores. We might also release exclusive titles of our home entertainment products through its stores.”

The Rs 80-crore home entertainment division of Sony Pictures has also decided to drop its vernacular-dubbed VCD prices by 60 per cent from Rs 199 to Rs 69. Cashing in on the festive season, Sony Pictures has released its international blockbuster Spiderman 3 in Hindi and Tamil VCDs at this attractive price.

“There are 110 titles which are dubbed. We intend re-pricing these VCDs at Rs 69,”says Mr Muthuram.

With intentions of reaching out to smaller cities and towns with its new pricing, Sony Pictures expects its VCD sales to contribute up to 40 per cent of its total sales. “We want to take our dubbed VCDs beyond the metros and take up the number of titles to 400 this year,” he said.

With India primarily being a VCD driven market, pricing would be the key to the growth of the category, which continues to be vernacular-based. Apart from the exhaustive Hollywood titles which are sourced from the company’s studios, Sony Pictures would now be going local with the launch of the Hindi film Saawariya.

“It depends on how our first Hindi film performs at the box office. But there would be DVDs and VCDs of the film and the pricing of these would be determined closer to the release of the film,” says Mr Muthuram.

Besides, Sony Pictures is also bringing in the Blue-ray Disc technology and has priced its discs at Rs 1,800 in the Indian market.

“We would be marketing and distributing the Blue-ray Disc technology in the Indian market. We already have 20 titles available with this technology,” says Mr Muthuram.

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