Big Music eyes 40% market share

Reliance ADAG's Big Music and Home Entertainment is looking at garnering close to 40 per cent market share of home and music entertainment business in India.

It is also eyeing Hollywood releases to capture at least 50 per cent market share of all the new releases.

The Hindi home entertainment market is estimated at Rs 650 crore at present and is expected to grow to Rs 3,000 crore in the next five years.

The music industry in India is estimated at Rs 900 crore right now, which is expected to double year on year on the back of mobile music downloads catching up.

Speaking to Business Standard, Kulmeet Makkar, chief executive officer of Big Music and Home Entertainment said, "We are looking at obtaining home video rights for about 50 Hindi films of 200 Hindi movies released every year. We are also looking at acquiring music album rights for these films."

The company would leverage its marketing expertise through its radio station (BIG FM), mobile (Reliance Communications) as well as produce original movies through its Big Motion Pictures.

The company has also entered into a strategic alliance with Universal Pictures International as exclusive licensee for India.

As a part of the deal, Big Music and Home Entertainment will market and distribute Universal's home video products in India.

Universal has over 2000 titles and 200 Hollywood titles which Big Entertainment is going to market and distribute in India.

It is also dubbing the content in Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, and other languages.

"For instance, we are dubbing the entire Barbie Doll series in Hindi for CDs and DVDs," said Makkar.

In music, Reliance entertainment also plans to acquire rights of close to 35 non-filmy Hindi music albums. According to market estimates, India releases some 100-odd non-filmy music albums per year.

At present, the biggest players in home video include Moser Baer, Shemaroo, Eros, and Eagle, among others.

"The competition is mainly with several regional home video label owners," said Makkar.

The company is therefore planning to acquire home video rights from local players for Bengali, Tamil, Telegu, Punjabi and Marathi languages.

The company is also setting up regional offices for localised content development. It inaugurated its Kolkata office recently and would open its Chennai office in January.

Kolkata is estimated to have close to 15 local home video label-owners while South India has almost 80 label-owners.

"In addition to movies and music, we are planning to create several niche categories for home videos. For instance, we would create CDs and DVDs on cooking lessons, fashion, and also celebrity life and talk shows that would interest people," Makkar said.

In music, the company is also planning to promote local artists and music bands.

For original content creation, the company has signed Jagjit Singh, Asha Bhonsle and A R Rahman for exclusive music videos and albums.