Focus on enhancing content library, distribution: Shemaroo

Shemaroo Entertainment is looking at different areas to increase digital consumption to aid growth, the company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Hiren Gada told CNBC-TV18. Shemaroo’s new media business grew nearly 83 percent in the June quarter. Gada says some part of the content library is pereptually owned by the company whereas in certain portion, ownership is shared with the producers. Gada says more than Rs 200 crore will be invested via internal capital in the current year. The focus is on developing the content library followed by digitization and distribution, he added. He expects a stable growth in the new media business and sees 78:22 sharing for traditional and digital media in the current year.Below is the transcript of Hiren Gada’s interview with Anuj Singhal and Ekta Batra on CNBC-TV18.Ekta: Just wanted to start with your digital revenues. So far your digital revenue has generated only via ads. What do you think are the other ways and which maybe the company can monetise content mobilisation?A: There are multiple ways in which we earn revenue. Ad supported is through YouTube or such similar platforms, but fundamentally in the digital eco-system at a larger level there are three different business models. One is what we may call a buffet kind of a thing or a subscription based. Second is transaction based and third is the advertisement based which is free to consumer normally. We participate in all the models and it finally depends on the platform. In addition to that there are different ways in which we look that how we can work with the platform to enhance the consumption of the content.Anuj: The content of your distribution channel, is it owned by you or co-owned with other producers. What terms and conditions do you work with, with respect to content?A: Our content library build up happens from two different ways. The first one is perpetual rights ownership where we are the de facto owner and we bought out a producers interest and stake in that content lock, stock and barrel. Second is the aggregate ownership where we own partial rights. So, Red Chillies for example, we own partial rights primarily own the TV distribution rights for Red Chillies but if we look at many of the other films that we have say ‘Jab We Met’, ‘Golmaal’, ‘Golamaal Returns’, Mujhse Shaadi Karogi’ or so many other films there we own multiple platform rights. These are what we call aggregate rights where the underlying copyright may continue to be owned by the producer but we have a certain period maybe five year, 10 years or even more in many such cases. As far as the perpetual rights are concerned movies like ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’, ‘Dil’, ‘Beta’ – so many other such movies which we own perpetual rights to.Ekta: You had earlier indicated that you are looking to ramp up investments. What will be the investments be for, content, platform building or marketing? A: Fundamentally, it is into content. Second part would be into building some allied technology or platform if need be, but fundamentally into digitisation or into some kind of distribution. Third would be on marketing front if at all. However, the core of the investment, the large bulk of the investment would be in the content in terms of enhancing and increasing the content library itself. Anuj: Any amount that you have earmarked for it?A: If we see last year, the amount was somewhere in the range of about roughly Rs 200 crore at a gross level. This year it should be slightly more than that.