Dear Shareholders,
We present your 13th Annual Report to you with great pleasure and
pride. The year has been a landmark year which has seen your company
making excellent progress in all its business domains and taking
tremendous leaps into new areas which bear great promise for all our
futures.
For the Indian economy, the year has ushered in numerous hues. However,
despite the path of the stock market, the spectre of inflation and the
situation in driver markets such as US, we remain realistically bullish
about Indian earning levels, real incomes and spending propensities in
most areas of consumption including entertainment.
Your cinema screen count continued to expand and every PVR cinema
continued to deliver superior performance in spite of intense
competition. A footfall of close to 18 million viewers in FY 07-08
assures us that the PVR cinema experience continues to be
unparallelled, even with many PVR innovations being emulated by the
rest of the industry. Your company continued to innovate to provide a
finer viewer experience and keep ahead of the competition.
In the distribution domain, your company continued to be the
distributor of choice for many prestigious studios and independent
directors - both Indian and international. PVR continues to grow as a
distributor and adds quality and diversity to the Indian screen by
profitably bringing in a plethora of talent that would otherwise remain
unexhibited in India.
Your company smashed all benchmarks with its maiden co-production
Taare Zameen Par, proving that good cinema with excellent human
values and good production standards can indeed win box office success
as well as critical acclaim.
Your company has several more productions in the pipeline, each of
which is based on a strong story line, a well- crafted script and
superb production values. Great effort has been made to cover every
possible base to ensure both good returns and betterment of quality
Indian cinema.
During the year under review, your company opened two foodcourts at
Sahara Mall, Gurgaon and Ambience Mall, Gurgaon. Your company has
further signed an MOU with M/s Gyan Enterprises Private Limited, a
company promoted by Mr. Amit Burman of Dabur group in order to partner
him in the F&B service retailing business.
Looking beyond cinema, your company has taken a bold, new view of the
Indian entertainment industry and is in the process of creating new
entertainment formats to take the savvy Indian audience several notches
higher. A new tie-up has been forged with Thailand’s largest provider
of premium entertainment, Major Cineplex Group, to form a new joint
venture which will offer bowling, karaoke and ice-skating in an
exciting new format that also includes cinema. Your company hopes to
engross a wider section of the Indian audience and engage them at a
deeper level - where they become participants rather than mere
spectators. This is the beginning of a very exciting chapter.
We continue to innovate and move every aspect of your company to
another level of leadership in every dimension. We are joined in this
endeavour by you, our stakeholders, our employees and associates, whose
cooperation we are grateful for.
We request your continued combined support in the future, for the
future that we envision is wonderful!
Good wishes
Ajay Bijli Sanjeev Kumar |