Eros to enter in Tollywood, Bengali
Eros International Media Ltd., which has a strong presence in Tamil, Marathi and Punjabi film industries, is looking for joint ventures or acquisitions to expand into regional language markets, especially Telugu and Bengali, a top official told on Thursday.
"We are looking at it because if we really have to grow faster, the fastest way to grow is to acquire somebody or to associate with somebody," Chief Financial Officer Kamal Jain said on the sidelines of the FICCI Frames conference for the media industry.
Eros forayed into Tamil films, its first in regional languages, in 2007 by acquiring a 51% stake in production house Ayngaran, which has a dominant market share in the Tamil content and distribution industry.
"We are looking for growth in these markets, may be starting with direct films with some lead stars there, understanding that particular market and then may be doing a tie-up. Or, we could do the tie-up first and then expand. Discussions are going on," Kamal Jain added.
The company traditionally invests about 15% of its capital expenditure in regional films and the rest on Hindi language films, he said. Eros has lined up more than 50 releases for FY12 across Hindi and other regional languages and expects the year to be very promising for the company. The company, which made a profit of 830 million rupees in FY10, expects to clock a profit of 1.1 billion to 1.15 billion rupees this fiscal.
