17.1.09

The PVR story


Across India, the way we watch movies today has changed completely, thanks to Ajay Bijli who came up with India’s first multiplex at Saket in New Delhi in 1997. Today, his company PVR is not just a film exhibitor but also a producer and distributor under the PVR Pictures banner. Bijli’s father Kishan Mohan Bijli ran Amritsar Transport Company with a fleet of over 500 trucks and had bought Priya Cinema in 1978. After his graduation from Hindu College, Ajay Bijli joined the family trucking business. “But I realised soon enough that I needed to do something different and was not satisfied with the traditional way of doing business,” he recalls. Priya Cinema became Bijli’s experimenting ground. Inspired by the success of Regal Cinema in Mumbai after it had installed a Dolby-based sound system, he approached his father with the idea of renovating Priya, and got a go-ahead. The total cost of renovating Priya with new chairs, carpets, screen and Dolby came to Rs 40 lakhs. “I had the total support of my father who would sometimes ask me ‘Ajay agar Dolby lagayenge, to log ayenge? (if we installed Dolby, would people come?)’. Priya opened in 1991 with the comedy Three Men and a Baby. A year later Bijli met up with Mike Macclesfield, the then president of Universal Pictures. “He suggested that I should think about setting up a multiplex and talk to an Australian company called Village Roadshow (one of the largest multiplex in Australia). The idea sounded exciting and I visited Australia twice to meet the management of Village Roadshow,” he says. In 1995, Priya and Village Roadshow entered into a 60:40 joint venture and Priya Village Roadshow (PVR) was born. The new partner wanted Bijli to convert Priya into a multiplex, but he wanted to run it as a single screen theatre only. So they began scouting for another location and met Gopal Ansal, owner of Anupam Cinema at Saket. The result was India’s first 1,000-seater multiplex at Saket in 1997. Later when Village Roadshow pulled out in 2003, Bijli changed the name of his company to PVR Limited. The exit of the international partner did not stop Bijli from pursuing his expansion plans and in the same year he raised Rs 38 crore from ICICI Venture as part of the funding to support his Rs 100 crore expansion plan. PVR at that time had four cinema complexes in Delhi and was planning to launch a seven-screen multiplex in Gurgaon and an 11-screen multiplex in Bangalore, which it later did. As India’s economic growth story caught on, so did Bijli’s ambitions to become more than just a cinema exhibitor. In 2001, PVR ventured into film production and distribution by floating a wholly owned subsidiary called PVR Pictures. “From the exhibition business, backward integration into distribution and production was a natural progression for us,” he says. Since 2001, PVR Pictures has distributed about 150 English movies and 75 Hindi and other regional language movies. On the production front, Taare Zameen Par, India’s nominee for the Oscars last year, was PVR Pictures’ maiden venture into production along with Aamir Khan. That made waves and so did the subsequently co-production with Aamir on Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. Another movie Contract didn’t work too well but two out of three is not a bad count. “Our next film Mere Khwabon Me Jo Aaye is due for release soon,” says Bijli. ICICI Venture and JPMorgan put in another Rs 120 crore in the subsidiary in June last year to pick up an undisclosed stake. In 2006, PVR raised Rs 128 crore through an IPO to fund its new expansion plans. Today, PVR has 101 screens across 14 cities and many more in the offing. Bijli’s latest is an upcoming 24-lane bowling alley and a karaoke bar at Ambience Mall in Gurgaon. He has a new international partner this time – a JV with Major Cineplex, Thailand’s largest cinema chain operator.

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