Anshumaan Swami CEO, Applause Entertainment "Film business is like quicksand and even after you have done 20 films, you cannot predict what will happen to the next one"

When Anshumaan Swami got down to marketing Black, he didn't think of it as a movie. Instead, he looked upon the Amitabh Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee-starrer as a pricey Bentley or a snazzy Louis Vuitton. In an industry where 800 movies roll off production studios every year, why would anybody risk pussyfooting with marketing? Because the movie, about a deaf-dumb-blind girl and her ageing, eccentric teacher who is hell bent on making her self-reliant, wasn't meant to be a mass-market fare. In fact, it strayed so far from the typical Bollywood formula that it had all the chances of bombing on the box office. There were no action scenes, colourful and hip-gyrating songs, or even pretty faces. On the contrary, heroine Mukherjee was made to look plainer, Bachchan much older and eccentric than he actually is, and the director demanded a level of sensitivity not usually expected of viewers of Hindi movies. Says Swami, CEO of Applause Entertainment, an Aditya Birla Group company that produced the movie: "My core audience for the film is that which understands what Amitabh Bachchan says in the movie: Mujhe vishwas aur samay ke sivai aur kuch nahi chahiye (I don't need anything other than time and trust)."

Convinced that the usual marketing strategy won't work, Applause decided to go in for word-of-mouth marketing and restrict the initial release to multiplexes, which meant that only audiences in metro cities, and that too from sec A and B categories, would be watching it. For a movie that had cost Rs 21 crore to make, it was a risky marketing plan to adopt, but, fortunately for Swami, it seems to have paid off. Six weeks into the release, Black has fetched around Rs 15 crore in theatre ticket sales and another Rs 4.5 crore from satellite TV rights (film producers sell television rights to channels). Says Komal Nahta, a Bollywood tracker: "In multiplexes and in big cities like Mumbai and Delhi, the film has done exceptionally well and is a fair grosser."

Movie Management

Two years ago, when the Aditya Birla Group's young Chairman, Kumar Mangalam Birla, roped in Swami to launch Applause, he was wading into treacherous waters. Unorganised and chaotic, Bollywood had steadily resisted all attempts at "corporatisation" of movie making. Among the famous failures is ABCL (of Amitabh Bachchan that's now making a comeback). Indeed, Applause's first movie, Dev (again a Bachchan starrer) sank without a trace. Recalls Swami: "The fear set in when local newspapers said that yet another corporate bites the dust." Therefore, when he was first approached to bankroll Black, he took six long months to make up his mind, never mind that it boasted of a reputed director like Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

Movie business is likely to be Rs 14,300 crore-big by 2010. But producers will have to build a portfolio of cost-effective films across different genres, languages and market segments

Yet, the fact remains that movie making is a tricky business, where nine out of every 10 movies produced fail to generate profits. Swami, an advertising professional who also managed Grasim Mr. India for the Aditya Birla Group before joining Applause, knows that only too well. Which is why even before he signed for the first movie, he tried his hand at movie distribution. In 2003, Applause bought the distribution rights of a British-made movie, Anita and Me. The idea was to tell Bollywood that Applause was in business. And when it did come to producing a movie, the company chose a low-budget Bengali film, Tepantorer Mathe, meant for the film festival circuit, followed by another low-budget movie, but in Telugu, called Tapana. Says Swami: "We lost money on the productions, but they gave us insights into movie making in India."

Will Applause deliver another Black this year or even the next? Nobody can tell, least of all Swami. That's a reason why Applause does more than just make movies. It has a fledgling visual effects and animation division that did some work for The Lord of the Rings III: The Return of the King, but its "bread and butter" business is television software. Starting with Bollywood Tonight (a half-hour show on Zee UK and us), Applause now has three different shows on Zee and Star TV. Predictably, this is not a market without its share of competition. Successful content houses like Balaji Telefilms and UTV churn out 32 and 20 hours of programming every week, respectively, compared to Applause's 6.5 hours. Also, the newcomer's focus has been on fiction. There are plans of producing non-fiction shows too. Generally, large canvas fiction shows are more expensive to produce, but offer higher returns than non-fiction ones. Says Swami, whose company is yet to see a rupee in net profits: "It's a slow process and takes 10 months to a year."

But, then, Swami is in no rush. The long-term prospects for the entertainment industry look good. According to a CII-KPMG survey-Indian Entertainment Industry: Focus 2010-television is the most important component, contributing more than 60 per cent of the revenues. Better still, it is expected to drive the industry's growth well into the digital era, with the advent of new delivery systems such as direct to home (DTH) and interactive TV. According to the survey, the TV software market is currently estimated at Rs 13,900 crore and expected to touch Rs 37,100 crore by 2010. Says Rajesh Jain, Executive Director, KPMG: "There are large corporate houses looking at this segment because this is going to be a big driver of the entertainment industry."

Films, understandably, will continue to be the ones that bring glory, if not top dollar. After all, it's only half as big as the TV software market and will only be Rs 14,300-crore big by 2010, according to estimates. No doubt because of the high risk, KPMG consultants think that producers will need to adopt a very different strategy in the future. Instead of making one or two big-budget movies, they will have to build a portfolio of cost-effective films in a year. They will also need to look at different genres, languages and market segments to spread their risks better.

Swami couldn't agree more. "The movie business is like quicksand and even after you have done 20 films, you cannot predict what will happen to the next one," he says. Not even the most successful producer in Bollywood is allowed to forget that cardinal rule.