Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Jun 17, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version | Audio
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Jun 17, 2008 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version | Audio |
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Marketing
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Market Shares BigFlicks bullish on DVD rental market
The company is cashing in on the popularity of Reliance Telecom’s phone cards, allowing consumers to use them to pay for movies downloaded. Our Bureau New Delhi, June 16 Reliance ADAG’s movie rental business, BigFlicks, hopes to capture 35 per cent of market share of the home video DVD rental business over the next 8-10 months. The company, which recently rolled out a multi-platform campaign and ran a series of promotional events across a host of retail chains, plans to have 200 outlets by March 2009 including shop-in-shops at Reliance Web Worlds. The current count is 50 stores across the metros and cities such as Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Chandigarh. Big Flicks is hoping subscribers will be hooked to its portfolio of more than 15,000 movies, including international and regional language tiles. It is bundling the Reliance data card billing systems with the membership for the home entertainment business across Pune, Chandigarh and Hyderabad, amongst other promotional activities. Subscription trial offers with purchases of Reliance Web World’s broadband packages are also being made available in the three cities. In the future, the company plans to adopt a franchise route. BigFlicks has an investment commitment of $100 million to be spent over a period of three years. The business has a three-fold distribution strategy — movies are available on rent from the retail outlets; or they can be called in or e-mailed for and BigFlicks will have them home-delivered; or they can be downloaded. According to Mr Kamal Gianchandani, COO, BigFlicks is an aggregator with a service element thrown in. BigFlicks’ broadband division or movies for download is targeted primarily at the Indian diaspora and offers downloads priced at between $2-10 and streaming. The company is cashing in on the popularity of Reliance Telecom’s phone cards, allowing consumers to use them to pay for movies downloaded. Content will also soon be available on mobiles and iPods. BigFlicks.com’s subscribers are based in North America, UK, Canada, West Asia, South-East Asia, Europe and Australia. But it also gets hits from far out unexpected places, according to Mr Gianchandani, who believes Indian content is going places, literally. Competition would come primarily from the pirated unorganised movie rental business, but “Piracy is not scaleable!” points out Mr Gianchandani. Consumers, he believes, are willing to pay for clean, quality content if it is made available to them at a reasonable cost. At a subscription of Rs 299 per month (with a refundable deposit of Rs 400), subscribers can borrow, one at a time, as many DVDs a month as they choose too. A movie a day works out to an expense of Rs 10 per show. More Stories on : Market Shares | Healthcare Products
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