Ajjay Bijli NUMBER OF SCREEN: 3 multiplexes, 1 cineplex NUMBER OF SCREENS/MULTIPLEXES IN THE PIPELINE: 48 screens CITIES WHERE HE'D BE PRESENT: Delhi, Bangalore & Mumbai TOTAL INVESTMENT PLANNED: Rs 100 crore (approx.) MODEL: Will take up multiplexes on lease. Not to invest in real estate. Owns only one hall (Priya Cinema in Delhi).

They don't do it with mirrors any more, they do it with screens. Make and multiply celluloid magic, that is. And the businessmen leading the mania for multi-screen movie theatres-the Multiplex Moguls-are almost teeny-bopper dreamy in their enthusiasm for the concept that Priya Village Roadshow (PVR) introduced Indian audiences to five years ago.

You can see it on Deven Chachra's face. A movie buff, he needed his thrice-weekly movie fix even while at Wharton. He returned to India in 1994, so bedazzled by US multiplexes that he wanted to convert his family-owned cinema hall in West Delhi into one. His family thought he was crazy-till May 1997, when they saw PVR Anupam. Located in South Delhi, it was India's first multiplex, run by Priya cinema owner Ajjay Bijli, who had struck a 60:40 joint venture in 1995 with the Australian exhibitor Village Roadshow. Compared to the crummy old halls, it was a 100-mm leap: snazzy decor, computerised ticketing, TV monitors, plush seats and superb acoustics. The complex had two small halls, two big halls-and swarms of moviegoers.

It was clear that upmarket India was ready for a swank new theatre experience. Impressed, Chachra's family decided to turn Satyam into a four-hall multiplex. And now as Director, Satyam Cineplex Ltd, Chachra is busy setting up two more multiplexes in Delhi, three in Mumbai, and one each in Pune and Chandigarh.

Deven Chachra NUMBER OF SCREEN: Nil NUMBER OF SCREENS/ MULTIPLEXES IN THE PIPELINE: 7 multiplexes, 32 screens CITIES WHERE HE'D BE PRESENT: Delhi, Mumbai, Pune & Chandigarh TOTAL INVESTMENT PLANNED: Rs 100 crore MODEL: Will set up multiplexes, with some outlets (like a coffee shop) within the multiplex. But he won't get into setting up malls.

Fever

The other Moguls are no less active. Most of India's 11,000-odd old cinema halls are dilapidated, suffering as they do from fragmented ownership and neglect. This spells opportunity for new exhibitors who want to build a large-format retail business, with significant advantages of scale. Once a success model is created, it can be replicated across the country to form a chain. According to a FICCI-Andersen study, 1,000 screens are under construction across India. With an investment of at least Rs 2 crore needed per screen, that adds up to well over Rs 2,000 crore.

What exactly might India's Multiplex Moguls be up to?

Take a look:

• Bijli, Managing Director of PVR and the guy who started it all, ended his JV with Village Roadshow last year, and is expanding solo like nobody's business, with 48 screens coming up across Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi (including suburbs Gurgaon and Noida). His star projects: a seven-plex in Gurgaon, at MGF's Metropolitan mall, and an 11-screen one in Koramangla, Bangalore.

• Abirami Ramanathan is setting up a 150,000 sq ft mega mall in Chennai. The first floor would have a food court, the second floor retail outlets, the third-floor recreation facilities like a bowling alley and bumping cars, and a set of six cinema screens will be interspersed between the four floors.

• Raj Chopra, CMD, Competent Group, Maruti's biggest dealer, saw his family lose many cinema halls to Partition, but hasn't let that dampen his enthusiasm. Having been a film distributor for 25 years, he's ready to invest a claimed Rs 80 crore to become a leading exhibitor. Chopra's latest venture is 3c's, a film-cum-food plaza at Lajpat Nagar in Delhi, even as he goes about creating a chain of similar units in Delhi, Chandigarh and Lucknow.

• Shravan Shroff's Shringar Cinema Private Limited, a Mumbai film distributor, has an outlay of Rs 65 crore for six multiplexes in Mumbai, at locations ranging from South Mumbai and Powai to Malad and Thane. Its first multiplex in the city, Fame Adlabs, is already running, and Shroff is a rare Mogul who's invested in all three parts-production, distribution and exhibition-of the film value chain.

• Shishir Baijal's Inox Leisure, runs two multiplexes-one in Pune, another in Baroda. He now plans to invest a claimed Rs 175 crore in setting up nine multiplexes by 2004 with a total of 40 screens. He's expanding to cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Gurgaon.

• Subhash Chandra's Essel Entertainment is setting up 14 family entertainment centres with a total of 56 screens around the country, through its company E-City Entertainment, including such places as Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Lucknow and Chandigarh. At present, the company runs one multiplex in Ahmedabad, called Fun Republic. Chandra plans to invest over Rs 300 crore in these 14 centres.

• Harsh Vardhan Neotia, a Kolkata builder, is setting up a multiplex designed by renowned architect Charles Correa on 100,000 sq feet of space in the city's plush Salt Lake area with an investment of Rs 60 crore. Rahul Saraf, another builder, is putting up a multiplex at his mall in Kolkata, at the cost of nearly Rs 50 crore.

Abirami Ramanathan NUMBER OF SCREEN: Nil NUMBER OF SCREENS/ MULTIPLEXES IN THE PIPELINE: 1 multiplex CITIES WHERE HE'D BE PRESENT: Chennai TOTAL INVESTMENT PLANNED: Rs 11.5 crore MODEL: Multiplex in a mall

"Come Into My World"

The broad idea, for many, is to occupy as much of the target consumer's leisure time as possible, by offering a complete outing experience. This comes from the observation that a multiplex invariably acts as the anchor for a youth hangout. Delhi's cool crowd, for instance, has been drifting towards the PVR Anupam complex in Saket-which now hosts a McDonald's, Barista, Subway and Qwiky's, apart from several new pubs, fast-food joints, music stores, gift shops and so on. The location's real estate price has doubled since 1997 to Rs 120 per sq ft. The outdoor adspace rates have shot up too.

"Having a multiplex ensures approximately 1,200 footfalls in a day," estimates Jayashree Kurup, Assistant Director, Regional Research, Insignia Brooke, a real estate consultancy. It's the classic dating pattern. Guy takes gal for film, and then they shop, eat and hang around. "Most real estate projects have a gestation period of seven years. But in a mall that has a multiplex in it, investments can be recovered within a period of three-to-five years," reckons Shravan Gupta, Executive Director, MGF India Limited, a real estate developer.

The optimism is unmistakable. It has been a global phenomenon, after all, and India is better suited, if anything, to the concept. The only difference being that Indians prefer their movies to be part-musicals-which calls for music-attuned sound acoustics. "India is a cinema-crazy country," says Pranay Sinha, Associate Director, Jones Lang LaSalle (India), another real estate consultancy, "and 80-85 per cent of the respondents we surveyed for our research said that they equate leisure activities with watching a movie."

Shravan Shroff NUMBER OF SCREEN: 1 multiplex with 5 screens NUMBER OF SCREENS/ MULTIPLEXES IN THE PIPELINE: 5 multiplex CITIES WHERE HE'D BE PRESENT: Mumbai, Nasik, and Thane TOTAL INVESTMENT PLANNED: Rs 60-65 crore MODEL: Develop, conceptualise and manage multiplexes

What multiplexes hope to do is raise the leisure market's value as they go along, and gain from a higher price realisation per seat. PVR Anupam charges Rs 150 per ticket for its prime shows. For a family outing, that could mean a wallet drained of Rs 1,000.

Rather a lot, isn't it? Well, Yuppie India seems game. But even then, high ticket prices do deter a lot of filmgoers.

The original logic of multiplexes, remember, was to deliver flexibility by making an assortment of film strategies viable through variable pricing and hall sizes. This went hand-in-hand with the slow segmentation of the Indian market, as film preferences diverged. So, a film with globally-defrayed costs, say, 'The Road To Perdition' or 'The Guru', could show as a niche-appeal film at a high price in a 100-seat hall, while a local multi-starrer looking to capture the Indian multitudes, say 'Kaante', could show at a lower price to 400 viewers in one go.

So far, though, PVR has been charging more for Hindi blockbusters, which suggests that it's all about demand and supply, really. "A good movie is a good movie," says Bijli, "Everyone watches it. 'Dil Chahta Hai' and 'Lagaan' were liked as much by people in cities as by people in smaller towns." Just that the cross-section of viewers now includes those who have their own VCD or DVD players, but still pay big money for big screens.

Déjà Vu?

Though the overarching idea may be common, not every Mogul thinks alike. Chopra, for example, sees a big opportunity in food retailing. Some, like Chandra, Ramanathan, Neotia and Saraf, are sticking to the mall-multiplex format, which is a part retail play.

What about backward integration? A crisis-ridden industry could do with some investment. In fact, a risk that all exhibitors run is that of Bollywood losing its magic touch. "That's the dilemma of our industry," says Bijli, "We have no control over demand and supply."

Well, Shroff already has interests in all spheres of film-making. Bijli, who prefers leased property to actual ownership of halls, has turned distributor already, and is thinking of making movies as well. "The quality of films that Bollywood is churning out is so pathetic," he sneers, "that I may get into film-making on compulsion." Chachra, too, sees himself as a film exhibitor rather than as a retailer of movies, and expects to leverage the clout of large-scale operations one day, and even enter distribution himself, perhaps turning producer later. His dream is to emulate the big American studios.

Raj Chopra NUMBER OF SCREEN: 1 NUMBER OF SCREENS/ MULTIPLEXES IN THE PIPELINE: 3 multiplex CITIES WHERE HE'D BE PRESENT: Delhi, Chandigarh, and Lucknow TOTAL INVESTMENT PLANNED: Rs 80 crore MODEL: A multiplex with a food court, located in a mall

Ambition is good. Celluloid ambition very good. But hardnosed business analysts might get a bad case of déjà vu from all this. A big bang success gets hyped to the skies, followed by a mad rush of investment, ending in a small whimper. That was the dotcom story.

So let's ask: does Mumbai really need 200 more screens? Does Gurgaon, Delhi's snazzy suburb, really need five multiplexes?

No, says Chachra, adding that nine out of 10 American exhibitors have gone bust. Bijli also expects a shake-out. Gurgaon, he feels, would need another million residents to support all the new capacity that is coming up. "Earlier, owning a cinema hall used to be a prestige issue," he says, "Today, setting up a multiplex is one, and no one is bothered about estimating the market correctly."

Anshuman Magazine, Managing Director, CB Richard Ellis, expects fierce competition to force ticket prices down. Fixed prices aren't sacrosanct either. As nationwide chains hook up to computer networks, variable pricing might come in, with prices falling in real-time as demand falls.

The Internet even enables auctions, but then, broadband will ultimately transmit streaming films as well. Globally, home-viewing is gaining, as Sue Evans, Head, Consumer and Retail Practice, A.T. Kearney, points out. Multiplexes will have to bank largely on the charm of the outing experience. So long as guys and gals continue to go out, they should be fine.

Real film buffs, however, will want access-on-demand at home, from their own bean-bags and couches. As technology advances, the software might eclipse the hardware, and Napster-style film swaps might start happening. Is the industry prepared-or will it get swamped by its own success?

additional reporting by Abir Pal in Mumbai, Debojyoti Chatterjee in Kolkata, Nitya Varadarajan in Chennai, and Abha Bakaya in New Delhi.