The company is in negotiations with international news agencies BBC World and Reuters for local content development. It will also produce documentaries for BBC World to be aired in Britain.
The company has also been approached by Doordarshan to market the national broadcaster's news internationally, the company's officials said. "We have received proposals from various companies to market their content and are in advantaged stages of talks with them. Our strength lies in our creativity and skills and we are looking for different avenues to market it globally," a company official said.
The company is also in advanced stages of talks with foreign cartoon channels - Kermit and Disney - to market their programmes in India. The programs will be dubbed in Hindi, Tamil and later on, in other regional languages if the first two turn out to be commercially feasible.
The company official added, "Various production companies such as Fox Universal as well as Disney are looking to source local sitcoms from India. We have been making presentations to these companies and are interested in partnering or forming joint ventures with them. A lot of global players are setting shop in India like they did in China, as they have identified it as an emerging market."
The international trading and dealing in television software, film, media, news, entertainment, event management and creative consultancy will be done through Pritish Nandy Com International FZE (WLL), a 100 per cent subsidiary of the company located in Ajman, UAE. The subsidiary, incorporated on August 1, 1999 has Nandy and Rina Pritish Nandy on its board of directors. The share capital of the subsidiary is $100,000 for 1998-1999.
PNC was recently in the news for bagging the rights to market the Sydney Olympics 2000, which has been billed as the biggest sporting event in the history of Indian television, and will be shown across three Doordarshan channels: DD National Network, DD Metro and DD Sports.
The seven year-old company has made an operating profit of Rs 32.7 crore for the year ended March 31, 2000. Net profit was Rs 2.4 crore on a total income of Rs 14.1 crore. For the year ended March 31, 2001 it has projected a total income of Rs 50.9 crore and net profit of Rs 9.8 crore.
The company has commissioned KPMG to hone its management structure. On the advice of KPMG, Pritish Nandy had stepped down from the post of managing director in early 1998. Currently Nandy holds the post of chairman of the board.
