MUMBAI: Excel Home Videos has won two awards at the recently held global Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment licensee conference in Paris.

This is the first time that Excel Home Videos has won laurels at the meet. The award was received by the company’s managing director M N Kapasi. Excel is also the licensee for Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment in India.

The award for the Best Performance for Animated Feature Film was conferred for the home entertainment performance of the Pixar offering, Cars. The DVD was released, last November amidst a children’s DVD festival with a record number of units.

The award for Best Theatrical Synergy was received for the success of Pirates of the Caribbean and Ratatouille. The promotions during the theatrical release of the second and third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean ensured success for the DVD, which achieved the number one slot on the charts for over eight weeks, a first time for any DVD re-release.

The success was duplicated during the launch of the recent Pixar movie, Ratatouille. A cross promotion between Ratatouille cinema tickets and DVDs of earlier Pixar releases like Cars, Finding Nemo, Incredibles, Monsters Inc, A Bugs Life, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 had a great impact on its DVD sales.

There were over 19 countries from the EMEA and APAC regions competing for the honours including China, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Ukraine.

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment vice president Emerging Markets Chris Marsh said, “Excel Home Videos has been very creative and synergistic in distributing and marketing Disney VCDs/DVDs, and they have built a solid foundation for India’s legitimate home entertainment business through their constant great sales, marketing and publicity efforts. We are very thankful to their contribution to Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.”