India Story' demands change

Fresh funding flows in, modernization continues
By PATRICK FRATER
Debate flares up regularly as to whether the Indian entertainment sector is a bubble about to burst. Certainly, last year's Ficci-Frames convention was a platform for some purple prose along those lines. But the past year has not witnessed a crash. Instead, fresh funding has continued to flow in as the industry has modernized on many fronts at once.

Coin came in quickly over the span of 2001 to 2006, after the film sector was given ''industry status'' by the government. "Many companies used that badly," said Ashok Wadhwa, head of Ambit Corporate Finance at last year's confab. Immature companies rushed to the stock market and disappointed investors. "Now that the 'India Story' has emerged, things need to be different."

But investment has continued to flow in to Indian entertainment. It ranges from further private equity funding of groups like Nimbus to large joint ventures with Western media congloms to overseas IPOs. In February, global investor George Soros generated frothy headlines when he put up $100 million for a 3% stake in privately held Reliance Entertainment.

But arguably the most dramatic move was the $1 billion plonked on the table by Sony Entertainment Television and Singapore's World Sports Group to back a new made-for-TV cricket franchise.

Their confidence seems to have been justified by the welter of other corporations -- and Bollywood names including Shah Rukh Khan and Preity Zinta -- who put up $725 million for team franchises and a further $42 million for first-draft players.

The reasons for the inflow are not hard to see either. The India Story is the demographic perfect storm of a huge population that is young, increasingly middle class and internationally minded -- that translates into increased disposable income, and leisure spending entertainment is expected to grow.

But possibly the most compelling reason for the inflow is the growing corporatization of the highly fragmented industry. Respect for each other's high standards of corporate governance was said to have been a major factor behind NBC Universal's $150 million investment in NDTV.

The opportunities for consolidation are huge. Most film producers are still small-time operations, have little access to distribution and behave like traders quickly selling their product in order to make a margin.

But vertically integrated groups with long-term vision and professional management are shrinking the picture considerably and are attracting substantial coin to help them do so.

Giants like UTV, Eros and Adlabs/Reliance, in their different ways, are each developing studio models that allow them to retain talent, buy productions and distribute globally. (Rooted in Hindi-language Bollywood, all three are also attempting to bridge the cultural, linguistic and regional divides within India and have greenlighted Tamil and Telegu productions. Where film distribution was once divided into 22 regions, there are now seven or eight.)

In contrast to the shingles based around a single star or helmer, Eros and UTV each boast distribution slates of 40-plus pictures. They stand accused of creating talent and budget inflation, but unlike the minnows, they have the ability to amortize their flops and sell packages to TV and ancillary markets.

Others business models may succeed. Having guaranteed itself a place at the bargaining table through its hardtop circuit, Pyramid Saimira, a multiplex group operated by former producers, floated on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and is raising a production fund. INX, the private equity-backed TV startup headed by former Star TV co-chief Peter Mukerjea, also intends to expand into films as soon as his networks start to generate positive cash flow.

Eros and UTV's film arm aired their global intentions and corporate governance credentials by listing on the AIM section of the London Stock Exchange. Investors had little problem digesting the model when the Indian Film Co. also tapped the London market with a $110 million offering. Although technically a startup, IFC emerged with established management, powerful corporate parents in TV18 and Viacom and an 18-title slate that it has subsequently expanded to 40-plus.

More narrowly focused, animation house DQ Entertainment followed them to the London market in November. "We could have had an easier time and possibly a better valuation if we had listed on the BSE, but Europe is a more developed investment market, and investors there better understand the long gestation periods involved," says DQ boss Taapas Chakravarti.

Listing on the BSE has been more the preserve of local TV channels, multiplex operators and Hindi-language production companies, and the pace of listings slowed in 2007. Their stock performance varies wildly, and some observers predict that many of the multiplex operators -- who have found profits harder to come by and fallen short of their ambitious building schedules -- will soon delist.

"I'm not sure that you can equate underperformance by some media stocks with a slowdown in IPOs. Rather, there are still funds available looking for good homes. But many investors are taking a close look and being sensible. First-round finance has gone in and what first-mover advantage there was has probably been had already," says PricewaterhouseCoopers' Marcel Fenez. "On the other hand, there is no doubt about the overall trend. The bubble is not bursting yet."

CASH FLASH
Some good reasons as to why international investors are talking up India:

* Indian entertainment and media are growing on all fronts: Theatrical B.O. is being driven by multiplexes, higher ticket prices and digital distribution.

* TV is being boosted by new channel launches, digital cable with mandatory new set-top decoders that should limit revenue leakage and the arrival of two or three more DTH satellite platforms to compete with the existing two commercial ones.

* Development of organized retail is creating shopping malls with DVD stores and multiplexes plus demand for nationwide ad campaigns.

* Mobile phone penetration has grown by 7 million subscribers per month recently, and many people will first use the Internet on a handheld device rather than a PC. This is already boosting ancillary revenues for items such as electronic wallpaper and games. Some forecasts even suggest mobile TV could be worth $5 billion in five years' time.