Rental video market comes full circle
The neighbourhood pizza guy could soon have competition from an unlikely source when it comes to delivering on time: the video rental home delivery service.When sports marketing and entertainment biggie Nimbus enters the home entertainment rental market, its USP will be delivering DVDs in 30 minutes flat.
Nimbus’s rental video service plans may be nascent but they’re not small. Says Harish Thawani, chairman: “We hope to pump in close to Rs 150 crore and offer at least 60,000 movie titles across 56 cities. Our services will be accessible through SMS, phone-in facility and the Internet.”
The home entertainment rental market has come a long way from its early beginnings when neighbourhood video ‘libraries’ trotted out scratched and often dodgy quality prints.
Today, customers are likely to log onto rental sites and feed in a list of movies they want to watch from a library of over 20,000 titles. The films are generally home delivered, two at a time, with no late fees. And the cherry on the icing? Rentals for quality DVDs are as low as Rs 199 for four films a month.
A recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers study shows that the home video market is growing at 30 per cent annually; over 12 million branded DVD players were sold in 2006 alone."The rental segment will only benefit from this growth, since customers don’t always want to buy DVDs," says Subhanker Sarker, COO of Seventymm.com that has 10,000 customers in Bangalore and another 3,000 each in Delhi and Mumbai. Madhouse.in, another emerging player that opened shop only a few months ago in Chandigarh and Delhi, with plans to launch in Mumbai soon, already has a customer base of 3,000. Mumbai-based Clixflix.com, barely a year old, has over 10,000 members."Our goal is to reach the 25,000-mark in each city across India," says Sarker. The break-even point for the company is 25,000 across the country. Clearly, it’s a market for the big boys.Seventymm recently raised Rs 50 crore, including a Rs 31-crore investment by venture capitalists Matrix Partners. Madhouse has received Rs one crore from various investors. "Big investors bring in both money and professional expertise," says Sameer Guglani, CEO, Madhouse.
Ironically, says Guglani, pirated prints have only “whetted the appetite of the home video audience, who now want original, quality DVDs at affordable prices”.
All the major players have ensured ground support. Madhouse has call centre and cellphone facilities and has tied up with 50 stores in Delhi as delivery points. Seventymm has plans to woo consumers through road shows. It also offers customers free rental incentives if six referrals sign on as members.
"You can’t beat the convenience of logging in on the computer or simply SMSing your movie choices," says Anahita Bendre, 36, a Delhi-based advocate. "It takes care of my family’s weekend movie-watching."
The future looks bright for couch potatoes. Sarkar said, "By 2010, the entire home video industry should be worth around Rs 2,140 crore. And the top three players in the rental video circuit could be worth at least Rs 300 crore each. Of course, it will mean the survival of the fittest."
Nimbus’s rental video service plans may be nascent but they’re not small. Says Harish Thawani, chairman: “We hope to pump in close to Rs 150 crore and offer at least 60,000 movie titles across 56 cities. Our services will be accessible through SMS, phone-in facility and the Internet.”
The home entertainment rental market has come a long way from its early beginnings when neighbourhood video ‘libraries’ trotted out scratched and often dodgy quality prints.
Today, customers are likely to log onto rental sites and feed in a list of movies they want to watch from a library of over 20,000 titles. The films are generally home delivered, two at a time, with no late fees. And the cherry on the icing? Rentals for quality DVDs are as low as Rs 199 for four films a month.
A recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers study shows that the home video market is growing at 30 per cent annually; over 12 million branded DVD players were sold in 2006 alone."The rental segment will only benefit from this growth, since customers don’t always want to buy DVDs," says Subhanker Sarker, COO of Seventymm.com that has 10,000 customers in Bangalore and another 3,000 each in Delhi and Mumbai. Madhouse.in, another emerging player that opened shop only a few months ago in Chandigarh and Delhi, with plans to launch in Mumbai soon, already has a customer base of 3,000. Mumbai-based Clixflix.com, barely a year old, has over 10,000 members."Our goal is to reach the 25,000-mark in each city across India," says Sarker. The break-even point for the company is 25,000 across the country. Clearly, it’s a market for the big boys.Seventymm recently raised Rs 50 crore, including a Rs 31-crore investment by venture capitalists Matrix Partners. Madhouse has received Rs one crore from various investors. "Big investors bring in both money and professional expertise," says Sameer Guglani, CEO, Madhouse.
Ironically, says Guglani, pirated prints have only “whetted the appetite of the home video audience, who now want original, quality DVDs at affordable prices”.
All the major players have ensured ground support. Madhouse has call centre and cellphone facilities and has tied up with 50 stores in Delhi as delivery points. Seventymm has plans to woo consumers through road shows. It also offers customers free rental incentives if six referrals sign on as members.
"You can’t beat the convenience of logging in on the computer or simply SMSing your movie choices," says Anahita Bendre, 36, a Delhi-based advocate. "It takes care of my family’s weekend movie-watching."
The future looks bright for couch potatoes. Sarkar said, "By 2010, the entire home video industry should be worth around Rs 2,140 crore. And the top three players in the rental video circuit could be worth at least Rs 300 crore each. Of course, it will mean the survival of the fittest."
posted by anandsonline @ Saturday, March 03, 2007
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