Dish-Shemaroo launch Miniplex: To premiere movies every Friday

Shemaroo Entertainment has tied up with Dish TV to launch a new premium service called Miniplex. This is a movie service which will premiere latest movies every Friday for subscription fee of Rs 60 per month.This service, which is still in its build up phase, will boost company's profits in FY18, Shemaroo's Wholetime Director & CFO Hiren Gada, told CNBC-TV18. The company is looking to tie up with other non-DTH platform as well, he added.Below is the transcript of Hiren Gada’s interview with Latha Venkatesh and Reema Tendulkar on CNBC-TV18.Latha: Can you describe this Miniplex product?A: Basically, what we have seen is that every year, more than 150 Hindi films release theatrically, but in a heavily ad dependent broadcast scenario, most of these movies actually do not find their way to television. So, Miniplex is hoping to fill that gap through premiering many of these movies which in a different way, we miss from television once their theatrical run is over.Latha: New, as in how new? They would be three months old after the theatre?A: Typically, they would be movies which have been released over the last two years. Reema: Could you give us a sense of the joint venture that you have? What will be the revenue share and how much can it aid your revenues in FY17?A: It is very difficult to give commercial details of any transaction but this is, I would say an innovative way to bring a lot of premium content to television which is not through an ad support. But through subscription or a paid window. That is really the target that we have looked at. And being a new service, we have to see how the consumer uptick happens. One small clarification I wanted to make is that this service has been running on Tata Sky and Airtel for the last few months and we have extended now onto the Dish TV platform.Latha: Let me put it this way. How much money do you expect from this product in FY17?A: FY17, is a kind of growth and stabilisation phase. The real numbers, since we have just expanded onto one more platform and hopefully, we should be taking onto other even non-direct to home (DTH) kind of platforms. So really, the service, FY18 should be a really important year for this.Latha: Should I expect therefore, that you will be with one of these Reliance Jio types? Is that what you are looking at beyond just television, set-top boxes and DTH, you will go to the mobile format?A: Options for this service to be extended in terms of platforms is definitely the digital New Media which has been an important. In fact, an important point to bring this service because again, putting this kind of content together is always a challenge for any platform. And then there are cable, there is international. So, there are other platforms where this service... (Interrupted)Latha: At least for FY18, give us the revenues that you are expecting. You have to give us some revenues. You are not giving us these joint venture details, fine. But what is in it for the investor?A: If you ask me, at this point, this is an innovative service. So, we have kept our expectations low key on this because this actually is a new kind of an innovative format. So, we do not want to create some large expectations on this and then say that this did not happen.Reema: Just because this same service has been running on other platforms like Airtel as well as Tata Sky, can you at least share those details, how much revenue have you got from each of those platforms, so that we can extrapolate that now that you have added on and extended this service to Dish TV as well?A: As I said, a couple of month or a few months that the service has launched. It is still in the build up phase. So, the numbers are at this point, in that sense, just growing from virtually a zero base. So, it is difficult at this point to give you more details on that.