The success of Hindi movies in overseas market in garnering revenue has encouraged a US-based company, Databazaar Media Ventures, to offer a platform for films release targeting Bengali and Bangladeshi population in US and Canada.

“We are the only company who is offering distribution facility for Bengali films in the US and Canadian market in all the channels,” Databazaar CEO Mr Oney Seal told PTI over phone from the US.

“This also allows simultaneous launch of Bengali films in India and the US which was not possible earlier. Non-resident Bengali film lovers had to wait for a few months or watch the same on pirated disks,” he said.

The journey began after Databazaar distributed its home production ‘Dwando’ making it first movie to be available on iTunes, iPads, retail stores and netflix.

“Since 2010, we have signed 25 titles and so far producers have earned Rs 75 lakh for organised distribution in the US and Canada. The company had handled titles like ‘The Japanese Wife’ and ‘Ek Tarar Khoje’,” Mr Seal said.

He said, “In future we will increase the revenue with increase in awareness among the half million Bengali speaking population here and also among the foreign film lovers.”

The business model for Databazaar is simple and there is no cost involved for producers in releasing the film, making them earn risk free revenue from overseas markets for full-fledged release or release on electronic media.

Databazaar also produces and retails movie DVDs at a cost of $4.99 to counter the pirated disks of the films.

Mr Seal said, “Databazaar is now focusing on IPTV in future with increasing demand for it in the US. We have already launched Databazaar channel on IPTV platform in operators like Roku and we are adding more. We are offering Hindi and a few other regional language titles beside Bengali on this channel,” he said.

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