MUMBAI: Manmohan Shetty’s Adlabs Films has signed a letter of intent (LoI) to acquire a majority stake in ace quiz master Siddhartha Basu’s television production house Synergy Communications Pvt Ltd. With this move, Adlabs plans to strengthen its position in the television content space and it is also the company’s first serious foray in the television business
Adlabs Films Ltd chairman and managing director Manmohan Shetty says, “Adlabs is acquiring 51 per cent controlling stake in Synergy Communications. Operational control will remain with the original promoters of Synergy. They will continue to manage the day to day business affairs of the company and will also chart future expansion and growth plans in view of synergies arising out of this association. Siddharth will be one of the prominent representatives of Adlabs in the television content business.”
The investment will be subject to all regulations. The valuation is subject of confidentiality provisions. The investment will be used for enhancing Synergy’s financial strength, production operations and scaling up of the content to include popular fiction and non-fiction content including reality and lifestyle shows.
“Adlabs will stand for quality content in the business. By March 2008 we want television content business to be one of the important divisions at Adlabs and contributing sizeable amount of revenues to the overall pie,” informs Shetty.
“We will also be very aggressively looking to develop content for international platforms. We want to scale up the television production business and adding a whole new repertoire of youth based content,” says Adlabs Films Ltd director Pooja Shetty.
Synergy Communications founder Siddhartha Basu adds, “The alliance with Adlabs would allow Synergy to not only consolidate its ability to deliver fine TV programmes with world class production values in different genres, but would also enable us to develop, in a scalable way, an exciting range and depth of content for emerging opportunities in a variety of media.”
Synergy Communications has to its credit shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati (Star Plus), Mastermind India (BBC World), Bluffmaster (Star One), Mum Tum Aur Hum (Star Plus), Kamzor Kadii Kaun? (Star Plus) and Jhalak Dikhla Jaa (Sony Entertainment Television) amongst others.
