Makers of 'Breathe' charged up for New Year, plan to raise funds for Rs 750-cr content slate

Makers of Ram Setu, Abundantia Entertainment, are all set their with their content lineup for the next two years.

The entertainment industry seems to be all charged up for the new year with Bollywood stars like Salman Khan and those who were missing in action this year making a comeback in 2025 and production companies like Abundantia Entertainment getting the ball rolling for its Rs 750-crore content slate.

Producer Vikram Malhotra, who leads the content company, earlier backed streaming successes like Breathe, starring Madhavan, and theatrical hits like Toilet Ek Prem Katha, featuring Akshay Kumar. He now plans to raise Rs 200-250 crore to support the Rs 750-crore content slate, which includes a host of theatricals and over the top (OTT) releases, for the next couple of years.

"Out of the 23 titles in development actively at Abundantia right now, the next three years should see an output of 18 of them, starting with six releases in 2025," he told Moneycontrol.

Plans to raise funds

Malhotra looks to raise the funds in the first half of 2025. "Abundantia had raised funds in 2013 and 2014 through private equity. We were at that time probably the only company in the space that had brought in private equity and external capital in this business. So we've been well-versed with the modalities of bringing in external capital and managing our strategic objectives with that. Fundraising has been on our mind for the last two years or so."

The producer noted that after diluting stakes in the company in the first fundraise in 2013-14, he completed a buyback from then investors and now owns 100 percent of Abundantia as the promoter family.

"This is going to be a fresh round of funding. I've been planning this as a form of fuelling our growth ambition and taking us to the next level. So far, we've had a tremendous five years in terms of creative and financial success and now the plan is to take it to the next level with the infusion of additional capital that allows us to exploit the opportunities that exist in the market," Malhotra said.

While sharing about fundraise, he talked about one of the biggest deals in the recent times in the content production space. "Dharma Productions deal with Adar Poonawalla's Serene Productions is a big one for the entire industry. The reason I say this is that you have a high-quality, established, very credible content creation and production distribution entity like Dharma Productions. And then you have this well-capitalised, world-class, visionary entity come in and support and invest in Dharma Productions. What it does is it makes way for external and strategic capital to come into our industry," he said.

Although at a smaller level, Abundantia had raised capital in 2013 and 2014 in a similar way. "Most importantly, we benefitted from the strategic outlook, the vision, the network, the governance, the guidance, and the processes that these larger entities bring which help our industry raise the overall game. I am grateful to my early-stage investors because of whom the kind of processes, the kind of structure, and the kind of thinking that came in in the foundational years of Abundantia not only set us on a good path but hold me in good stead even now," Malhotra said.

Content lineup

Titles in store for the new year include plenty of series and some movies for the big screen.

"The upcoming work includes content like Dal Dal, which is a series on Amazon Prime Video, featuring Bhoomi Pednekar in the lead, and is show-run by Suresh Triveni, who's done Jalsa for us earlier, and prior to that, Tumhari Sulu. It (content slate) includes the sequel to our successful horror film, Chori, which released in 2021 and will now see a release early next year. It includes work like Subedaar, which is a new film coincidentally again to be directed by Suresh Triveni. Production is currently underway, and it features Anil Kapoor, a bit of a genre bender in terms of action drama with a big boost of masala," Malhotra said.

"Going ahead, it involves work with prolific and exciting storytellers like Hansal Mehta, who's currently working on a series with us, Palash Vaswani (director of one the most successful series Gullak), who's working on another film with us, Bhav Dhulia (known for movies like Drishyam and Paan Singh Tomar) for another film, and the list goes on and on. Randeep Jha, who directed Kohrra, is doing his next series with us. Mayank Sharma, who wrote and directed all three seasons of Breathe is now making his feature film debut with us with production set to start in 2025."

Screen to screen

While the content slate is a mix of streaming and theatricals, it is the former that is contributing more to the revenues. "The first six years of Abundantia’s 11-year-old journey up to 2018 were dominated by releases on the theatrical platform only, and that is linked to the fact that there were no streamers of major consequence operating in the Indian market. 2018 onwards, with the launch of Breathe and leading right up to 2023, is where streaming started contributing a significant chunk of our revenue," he said.

Malhotra sees the trend to be more in favour of streaming platforms over the next two fiscal years. "Streaming will continue to contribute about 55 percent of our revenue in the next year. But theatrical is an unlimited box office potential game. So, one film could change this ratio in a big way."

He also cited Akshay Kumar's Sarfira, which did not live up to the expectations at the box office but clicked on streaming, making the movie Abundantia's largest contributing title in terms of revenue. "Sarfira underperformed at the box office but the film got top of the line reviews. The word of mouth was excellent, which led to very good performance on its debut on streaming as well as on TV. So a large part of Sarfira's projections that went into building our financials for FY24 were already pre-sold and factored in. This model allows the unpredictability of this business, especially box office, to be controlled in a big manner."

He said that streaming allows to up the volume game and at the same time brings in a certain surety of business but limits the upside.

On the other hand, for theatrical content, while the risk-reward ratio is very differently skewed to streaming in the sense that the unpredictability of the box office provides no floor on how the film could do at the box office, it also provides no ceiling. "This means that the potential to make money and returns on the investment on a particular project could be exponentially higher," Malhotra said.