With BollyWoo, fans can experience the lifestyle depicted in movies: Vinayak Kalani

Please tell something about yourself and your start-up.

I am a finance graduate of Drexel University, Philadelphia and have always been a Bollywood fan and always aspired to wear the clothes that Bollywood stars wear, go to these locations and live their lifestyle. That was basically the reason when I graduated and came back, I wasn't able to find a platform that suited my needs. We said that there's a gap in the market as it's extremely unorganised and there's enough demand to create something like this. That's how BollyWoo came up. The idea behind BollyWoo is to translate the movie watching experience or the locations, apparels and accessories as seen in films.

What kind of background work went into your venture?

It started about a year and a half ago. Bollywood is not an easy industry to get into if you are an outsider. We don't have any Bollywood connections as such. It took me an entire year only to build those relationships, pitching the ideas to the production houses and making them understand why this concept is valuable to them. Now movies don't live for the duration they are there at the box office, they live forever. Consumers can always experience the movie by buying the merchandise, visiting those locations. This concept helps the film live much longer, and the production houses really like that. This also creates revenue for the production houses that they haven't been monetising till now. There's a very small market of the films merchandise like the film's logo or dialogues printed on t-shirts -- this is not what BollyWoo does. It is the additional revenue stream that they never explored earlier. Today, we have major production houses on board, be it Yash Raj, T-Series, Fox Star, Dharma, Viacom, Disney, everybody is on board now for all their films. In all, there are seven big production houses on board and there are these productions houses that come up here and there. For example, we are tying up for the movie about Sachin - 200 Not Out -- with Carnival Cinemas and another film called Fever. So in all, there are tie-ups with 20-25 production houses.

How many movies have you tied up for?

The site has been live for three months. For the initial launch of the site, we started off with a catalogue of 10 films, around one from each of the production houses. They included Cocktail, Tamasha, Bewakoofiyaan, etc. Now, the idea is to do two films every three months.

What's the demand like?

The demand is exciting. We started with almost no marketing and having three products a day, and in the last three to four months, it has increased. Today, we are doing 60 products a day. So there has been an exponential increase in the demand. It's a lot of word-of-mouth marketing. We are experiencing 30% retention ratio where the customers are coming back. Every month we are seeing an increase. We are also signing bigger films.

How do you select movies? It often happens that though promotions are done at full scale, the film doesn't perform well at the box office. Does it also impact your business?

We have noticed that the film doesn't have to necessarily do well at the box office to do well on BollyWoo. Here, with us, it relies more on the star. For example, Tamasha did not do extremely well at the box office but its merchandise has been selling highest. Inventory of Cocktail, a 2012 film, is doing extremely well too. So the product life is not limited to those two weeks after the movie releases.

Which new films will you be signing up in the coming months?

Right now we may sign up either Shivaay or Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and then we will be doing another big T-Series production which will be coming up in November, and hopefully, Befikre by Yash Raj Films by this year end.

What's the revenue every month and what's the staff strength?

We do 60 orders a day. So, the monthly revenue is anywhere between Rs 10-15 lakh. It's a 35 member team which includes technical development, marketing, liaisoning, design and manufacturing. We outsource manufacturing. The logistics are handled out of Madhya Pradesh as it is the centre of India and logistically it's very efficient.

How did you source the seed capital?

Initially, I invested around one crore rupees, but we are also looking at investments from venture capital firms.

The website mentions about visiting locations where the shoots have happened, but the services haven't been launched yet.

Right, it's a new venture. Now the idea is to evolve the product to travel and a lot more, it doesn't stop there. We have a large and exciting plan to create a small marketplace. In next two months, we would be launching our location services. Every film will have a location feature attached to it. We are talking to two large travel aggregators of India and will be strategically tying up with one of them. It will not be a usual kind of a package model, travel will be a lot innovative.