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R. Ravikumar

Chennai, Aug. 28 BigFlicks, a division of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group’s (ADAG) Reliance Entertainment, is all set to roll out its online movie downloading services tomorrow through bigflicks.com.

According to Mr Kamal Gianchandani, CEO, BigFlicks, the Web portal targeting NRIs will have 200 titles in multiple languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Punjabi, and gradually grow to 1,000 titles in two to three months’ time. “Our target is to offer at least 2,000 titles in 12 months from the date of launch,” said Mr Gianchandani.

According to him, the cost per movie would vary from $2 to $15.

“We seek to connect our NRI users especially in North America, the UK, Canada, West Asia, South-East Asia, Europe and Australia, with our vast and expanding libraries of quality video entertainment content,” he said.

The other revenue model of BigFlicks will be physical lending of CDs and DVDs. It plans to open 100 stores in top 50 cities in phases. In the first phase, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Pune will see the BigFlicks outlets before September-end. The number of outlets will go up to 500 in two years.

In this model, the company will have at least 16,000 movie titles across languages to offer, he said. It also plans to offer door delivery service wherever it has an outlet.

Pegged at Rs 300 crore, the size of the home video market in both the sell-through and rental formats is expected to grow manifold in the days to come.

According to Mr Kulmeet Makkar, CEO, BIG Music and Home Entertainment, a division of Reliance Entertainment, the company is in talks with a couple of leading labels to buy out their entire catalogue.

“The acquisition is likely to happen within three to five months’ time,” he said. The first music and home video rights the company acquired are that of Tamil film Kireedam. Subsequently, it bought Bollywood film Cash. Other films in the pipeline are Salman Khan’s international film Marigold, two films from Adlabs, Prakash Jha’s Dil Dosti and Khoya Khoya Chand. The company als o plans to acquire standalone home video rights.

Overall, the company will focus on at least 10-12 Indian languages including Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Gujarati and Bengali, apart from Hindi and English.

According to industry sources, the acquisition of contents or labels could be a complete buyout or joint ventures; and the group’s presence in FM radio (BIG FM), film production (Adlabs), gaming portal (Zapak), BigFlicks, Big Music may create a significant synergy.

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