MUMBAI: Subhash Ghai’s Mukta Arts has acquired a 51 per cent majority stake in Coruscant Tec, which is a Chennai based value added services (VAS) company. Additionally, Mukta Arts is also likely to acquire the remaining 49 per cent stake in the company soon.
Coruscant Tec, founded in 2003 by Ajay Adiseshann and Probir Roy, was one the first companies to venture into the mobile value added services space (MVAS) and provide content and applications related to the fast growing MVAS space.
Speaking to Businessofcinema.com Mukta Arts CEO Ravi Gupta says, "We expect to acquire the remaining 49 per cent stake in the company too. While I cannot disclose the price at which we have acquired the stake, I can say that it is a decent sum."
The MNAS space cover ringtones, wallpapers, Video on Demand, applications, m-comics, mobizines, mobiepisodes and java games.
Mukta Arts chairman Subhash Ghai said, "The acquisition of Coruscant Tec is a logical step towards launching Mukta’s web and mobile digital initiatives and enter the VAS space. Mukta is a content creation company and Coruscant Tec offers content delivery solutions in the new media space. We expect synergy arising out of short format content created by Mukta or Whistling Woods students and released through the tie-ups Coruscant has with Telecom Companies such as VSNL and Vodafone."
Coruscant Tec founder and managing director Ajay Adieseshann added, "Several players, wishing to consolidate or enter the mobile VAS space, have expressed interest in our company. We found that Mukta Arts with its command over the complete entertainment value chain in India, was the best fit to provide the necessary scale and boost to the business, which is currently a $ 1 billion market growing at 40 per cent per annum and expected to become a $ 4 billion market by 2010."
Throwing light on how Coruscant Tec would fit into the Mukta Arts portfolio, Gupta says, "We have a lot of short format films and content coming out of Whistling Woods International where our students are constantly churning out content. We will be looking at exploiting that content over mobile platforms and Coruscant Tec has strong relationships with content aggregators on the net and also with mobile companies. Apart from Whistling Woods International, we at Mukta Arts are also content creators and going forward we will have the option of exploiting our content like wallpapers, ringtones over the mobile through our own arm."
At present Mukta Arts’ music rights have been sold to T-Series and hence the latter exploits ringtones etc over digital and mobile platforms.
Coruscant Tec is undercapitalized and was seeking investors who could create and aggregate content which is the key to this business.
