Saregama moves from music to movies

Saregama India Ltd, the entertainment arm of RPG Group, is betting big on developing software for television in 2011-12 when it will see its own programming in Hindi going on air.

“We are already creating software for regional television in the south and in West Bengal. In Hindi, our first show will go on air post IPL. In principle, it has been agreed with a channel,” Apurv Nagpal, managing director, Saregama India, told DNA.

With this, Saregama will also set up a separate business division to exclusively look at content development for TV, Nagpal said.
The year will also see the Sanjeev Goenka-controlled outfit foraying in Tamil movie production.

“So far, we have been doing Hindi and Bengali movies and in the coming year we will be producing our first Tamil Film,” Nagpal said. Saregama is also betting on Hindi movies despite the not-so encouraging response to its last Hindi release, Jhootha Hi Sahi.

“The response was below expectation, but we are also working on a pretty big project that we are going to announce within a month. I will describe it as having a very interesting story and it will be big budget as the story demands its,” Nagpal said.

Nagpal plans to do three to four films a year though in 2011-12 Saregama might end up doing 2-3 including a Hindi movie, Sound Track, releasing in August, and the maiden Tamil film and another one in Hindi. “Year 2011-12 will be exciting for us. We don’t have a mandate from Sanjeev (Goenka) that we would be doing a particular kind of film. We will do whatever excites us,” Nagpal said.

Faced by pricing pressure in the music industry and the high acquisition cost for new films’ music, Saregama is gradually reducing its dependency on its core business which is music.

“We are in the process of reducing our dependence on film music by growing other revenue streams like films and TV content thereby emerging as a full entertainment company,” he said.
Piracy, Nagpal said, is the single biggest threat for the music industry and would continue to remain so.

“Laws are urgently needed on digital piracy. The current government is anti-entertainment industry; the new Amended Copyright Act is ill-conceived as it doesn’t have one word on piracy, the biggest devil facing the industry.”

Fighting piracy by enforcing laws has its limitations, Nagpal feels. “I don’t have a single complaint against the police department. However, we have shockingly low numbers of policemen, who spend a considerable time in providing VIP security and we find it difficult to convince the authorities to deploy them in work like carrying out raids. It’s a fact of life.”