MUMBAI: BIGFlix.com will be investing approximately Rs 100 – 120 million (Rs 10 – 12 crores) this fiscal in its Video-on-Demand division. The company plans to increase its movie library strength to 5000 movies by the end of this year from the current 1500.
Reliance ADAG had set aside an investment of $100 million over four years for BIGFlix.com. Out of this approximately 20 – 25 per cent will be invested in the VoD business.
Speaking to Businessofcinema.com, BIGFlix.com head – content Rajesh Das says, "Based on our various agreements with content companies like UTV Motion Pictures, Shemaroo Entertainment and Mukta Arts along with regional content providers, we will have close to 5000 movies on our website by the end of this year. This will be a combination of new and catalogue films in Hindi and other languages."
While the focus is more on Hindi movies, the VoD website will also be acquiring movie content in languages like Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Bengali amongst others.
BIGFlix.com has now made available UTV Motion Pictures and Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Jodhaa Akbar for download. BIGFlix will also be adding movies like Wednesday, Race and Kismet Konnection to its VoD library for download. Some of the other movies that are also available for free streaming are Ghajini, Mumbai Meri Jaan, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Aamir and Ugli Aur Pagli. These movies will be made available on the website on a revenue sharing basis with the content providers.
Das adds, "We have seen excellent response to these movies so far especially the critically acclaimed movies and are confident that there is definitely a large audience across the globe waiting to watch these movies on our platform. With online streaming numbers growing at a very fast pace and a big rage amongst all age groups, we have seen a record of 10 million streams per month, at our end. Considering this trend, we are constantly looking at a vast pool of varied content to become the largest platform for Video-on-Demand largely in free streaming mode for our visitors."
