Sabse bada rupaiya...

The only thing is that ke Bhaiya, Sabse Bada Rupaiya...

In today’s times finance is one of the most integral part of how ventures and businesses function. The tryst of early bollywood with financial entities was highly difficult initially and finding solvent producers to fund entire movies was an unheard concept. A solution to the problem was floated by some key people in the industry with an inception of an association called ‘Films and Television producers Guild of India’. This association had very influential members on its panel such as Dr. V Shantaram, B.R Chopra, Mehboob Khan, Homi Wadia, Raj Kapoor, and for the next 50 years this association become the touchstone of the Indian film industry.

Still, the concept of financing movies in bollywood was way different from its western counterparts. The studio culture which was prevalent to an extent in bollywood, could never become the primary form of funding.  Independent individuals such as Mehboob Khan who directed as well as produced the epic ‘Mother India’ and B.R Chopra who produced various movies such as Sadhana and Naya Daur, were completely capable of funding as well as selling the rights of the movies. The legendary Raj Kapoor had many movies under his own banner R.K Studios ranging from ‘Shree 420’, ‘Awaara’ to ‘Jis Des mein ganga Behti Hai’. This culture continued in bollywood for decades with other camps like Yash Chopra, Subash Ghai, Yash johar all playing the part of being a ‘one man force’ in the crucial payment of the production bills.

It was early in the 21^st century that we saw a dynamic change engulfing bollywood in the matter of production. It initially started with many corporates realizing the golden opportunity to rake in the profits with the growing bollywood popularity. Some of the first to join the bandwagon were corporate such as the Oswals, Raymond, Pantaloons. Many corporate organizations then came up with a business strategy to establish media & entertainment companies as subsets of the parent company, mainly to invest capital in upcoming movie projects. Some companies which can be cited as examples are Tata Infomedia, a subset of Tatas,’ Applause’ the entertainment arm of Birla to Reliance Infotainment. Corporate funding has also led to insurance giants such as Bajaj Allianz entering the industry to insure films.

This revolution or so occurring in bollywood also created its ripples in the west with many mammoth Hollywood studios making their way to the Indian film industry. Many studios started having tie-ups with the Indian production houses to churn out box office hits. Sony produced the movie ‘saawariya’ for the worldwide market and took a share of the huge amount of collections it raked in.  This led Sony Corp now has a tie-up with Eros entertainment for 6 movies in the future. Other notable studios started creating partnerships such as Disney with Yashraj for the movie ‘Roadside Romeo’ and Warner Bros teaming up with Ramesh Sippy for the production of ‘Chandni Chawk to China’. The most recent success was the influx of profits which Fox Searchlight generated from the movie ‘My name is Khan’. An estimate showed that the 3 Billion dollar sensation ‘Avatar’ grossed 26 million in India where ‘My  name is Khan’ came a close second at 23 million. This clearly shows the intensity with which Hollywood biggies are realizing the exorbitant growth in the Indian film business.

Finally, with globalization embarking our country in the early 90’s, it is still fair to assume that we haven’t reached the maturity phase yet, which basically shows us that this is just the beginning. I’ll not be surprised if in the coming years more conglomerates enter the Indian film industry and heavily bet big with other forms of commercially viable media.