Software production house Nimbus Communications proposes to focus on motion picture production as its plans to launch TV channels and portals have not taken off. The company has chalked out an ambitious target of producing six films in the next two years, comprising a mix of Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Oriya and English films.
It is eyeing sales of Rs 30 crore and a gross profit of Rs 9 crore from film production during fiscal 2002-03.
Confirming this, Akash Khurana, chief operating officer, Nimbus Motion Pictures, said: " Even if we do three films a year we should be able to achieve Rs 20-25 crore and we are also looking at an international production in which case we will be earning in dollars. Therefore, we should be able to reach the target. The business of motion pictures is the business of harnessing creativity and managing people to deliver quality products on time and within the budget. At Nimbus we are using a process driven approach to achieve that."
It is understood that the company has already sunk in approximately Rs 7.9 crore in the motion picture business.
According to the company's draft prospects filed with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) early last year, the company had decided to restrict investments in film production to 5 per cent of its net owned funds. The company's present plans appear to be a reversal of that strategy.
Last week, the company commenced the filming of the Rs 15-crore Sanjay Dutt, Tabu starrer 'Sarhad Paar', announced in late 1999. The film is to be directed by Raman Kumar and is co-scripted by Khurana himself.
According to Khurana, Nimbus Motion Pictures will encompass multi-genre, multi-budget and multi-language movies. "We are planning to enter the telefilm arena, but are currently waiting for the economic climate to improve, so that projects get more affordable for channels.
The kind of budgets that these channels are coming up with is not viable. We have begun the process to accumulate scripts so that we have a good bank for telefilms projects," he added.
