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Hindujas to venture into Hollywood co-production

Savio G Pinto & Anusha Subramanian

The Hinduja group has decided to venture into Hollywood and other major markets of the global film industry for co-producing movies.

The group would be pursuing these initiatives through Hinduja TMT and would be looking at co-producing Hollywood movies targetted at a universal audience and not just the Indian expat.

According to Ramkrishan Hinduja, co-chairman, Hinduja TMT: "The group would be looking at making investments by way of financing as well as by getting into co-production activities for Hollywood movies. We would work with both studios and independent producers for these initiatives."

The company is already in advanced stages of negotiations with industry players for finalising various activities involved in the venture.

The company, which had recently restructured its operations based on recommendations from consultancy firm Accenture, has now brought all its media arms under one banner -- IN Network.

The IN Network would serve as the node for the group's media initiatives including movie production and distribution, television and its recently launched on and offline business.

The company would be looking to co-produce around 20 international movies per year through this foray, said Hinduja. It would also look at getting into distribution of these films.

On the amount of investment, Hinduja said that the investment would run into millions of dollars but refused to divulge the exact amount.

"We would first want to test the markets and learn the nuances even though we are reasonably confident about the venture. We will make sure that the business is financially viable with a substantially reduced risk profile. Further plans would be unveiled once we are off the ground," said Hinduja.

The group has already invested around Rs 300 million in financing Indian movies in the current year which has already started yielding results and significant amount of return.

In the domestic market the total exposure at any given time is around Rs 50-100 million.

With the company following a strategy of financing films that are nearing completion to minimise risk of delay.

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