Would like to explore tie-up with Netflix: Shemaroo

The recent Indian launch that Netflix has made may have raised many concerns for the top players in the streaming video service providers. But Shemaroo Entertainment says it is interested in tying-up with Netflix going forward. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Shemaroo Wholetime Director & CFO Hiren Gada told CNBC-TV18 that the company already has some content on the platform through an earlier tie-ups.Gada is of the view that any tie-up with Netflix will help company monetise content and will be margin accretive. He further tells Shemaroo has no plans of developing its own over-the-top (OTT) content platform.Below is the verbatim transcript of Hiren Gada's interview with Reema Tendulkar & Mangalam Maloo on CNBC-TV18.Reema: Would Shemaroo Entertainment be interested in a tie-up with Netflix?A: Absolutely. We are one of the large content owners and we control a huge library of content. Our model is platform and technology agnostics, so for us every new platform that comes up is one more shop front where we can monetise our content on. Already there is some content through earlier tie-ups which is residing on the Netflix platform.Mangalam: Could you also give us a sense of the kind of revenues that you are looking at from this tie-up in case the tie-up would happen for some benchmarking. Could you also say what the terms and conditions of your tie-up with Hooq were?A: Two things. Regarding Netflix there are different conversations happening and it is early stage to talk of numbers because it also depends on the roadmap; how they plan their India rollout in further depth. I think their local content strategy will depend on that. However, with regards to Hooq, it works on some kind of a combination of minimum guarantee in revenue sharing because you work on a starting point assumption of what is the base of the platform and then you work upwards in terms of uptick for the content that you are getting.Mangalam: What kind of revenue you get from Hooq. Could you break it up for us?A: I am not at liberty to discuss specifics of any deal but digital media for us has been growing; the first half grown at 82 percent for us and till last year we have been growing at 50 percent odd growth rate on the digital media and it has now become a significant part and slowly growing in size of our overall revenue pie.Reema: Are you already in conversation with Netflix?A: There are different conversations with different players happening at all the time. Reema: Are you currently in talks. Have you already started talks with Netflix?A: I wouldn't comment on that.Reema: Could you tell us that in case there is a potential hypothetical tie-up. Would it at least improve your margins, along with revenue improvement the margins with a potential tie-up with Netflix or any such digital platform would entail higher margins and therefore push up the consolidated margins of the company? A: As I said earlier that every new platform that comes up is a potential one more shop for us and that is definitely margin accretive.Mangalam: We have been seeing a trend of a lot of these content aggregators and content owners making their own apps. Would you be in future interested in doing that?A: At the moment we do not have any such thought process. As I earlier said that we are platform and technology agnostic, in fact today TV is a large platform, dominant platform in terms of revenue, so our revenue from TV is a large part of our overall pie. Tomorrow any other platform that comes up, we have cross platform content ownership, so that is an important part of the business.