PTI
Mumbai
Film content and entertainment business provider Shemaroo Entertainment plans to launch its movie premiere service 'Miniplex' on cable and online after partnering with leading DTH players, Airtel and Tata Sky.
Shemaroo has also sighted at the prospect of joining hands with other DTH players in the market.
“DTH has now emerged as a large subscription platform. So we started initially with Airtel and then with Tata Sky, and over a period, we will make this service available to many platforms as possible, where the paid subscriber base has some scale,” Shemaroo Entertainment Director Hiren Gada told PTI.
He added that the expansion would happen in a phased manner and it would take about three to four quarters to have a wider base.
“By next December we should be present on many more platforms. There are four other (DTH) players. There are cable operators, particularly in the phase I, phase II markets where the digitisation has already taken place or the cities where the process is taking place, so that is another set of people that we are looking to work with,” he said.
The company would be focusing on multi-system operators (MSOs) first as they have scale in terms of numbers and have technology back-end to support a paid platform.
He further said they are considering a digital platform distribution that the Miniplex content can go through, on a paid basis.
The company's digital business has been growing at a brisk pace and contributes around 16 per cent of the revenues, compared to 3 per cent, four or five years ago.
Last year the digital business clocked in a revenue of Rs 37 crore and this year in the first half, it has generated over Rs 29 crore.
The company has over 40 channels on Youtube and gets around 3 million views per day.
Gada said there are no plans at present for the company to launch its own digital platform.
“We are technology and platform agnostic. Our focus is to have our content on as many platforms as possible,” he said.
