When you catch a new Hollywood flick the next time; you need not to surprise to see a slew of Indian names listed as producers as the credits roll at the end of the movie.
Indus Media Entertainment, a Singapore-based firm is set to launch a first-of-its-kind Rs.300-crore offshore fund called Indus Media Capital, which will invest in South Indian films and Hollywood.
This five-year fund which will be soon launched in September will be based in Mauritius and target 20-30 investors, including HNIs (high net-worth individuals) and Indians with media business interests.
The company will go in for a Series II type fund with a larger corpus of about Rs.1, 200 crore depending on the response to this fund.
South Indian actor and producer PAR Subramaniam, and former CFO of Reliance Adlabs Devrajan Venkat, Hollywood producers Naveen Chathappuram, Charles Leslie are to be on the board of the fund.
“Seventy-five per cent of the fund’s focus will be on Hollywood and the rest on movies in Tamil and Malayalam and niche media opportunities, including TV. We already have six of the 18 projects lined up for deployment of these funds over the next 18-24 months,” said Devrajan Venkat.
These projects include the movie Night of the Living Dead, which is lined up for an October release, and mark the entry of actor Madhavan into Hollywood; TV series Brown Nation featuring former VJ Shenaz Treasurywallah, which is presently being shot in New Jersey in the US; and a Malayalam movie featuring actor Fahad Fazil.
“We will follow a rolling dividend model under which investors will get a return as and when projects get completed.
“Our investment philosophy will be to not get into any project till its commercials are completely closed,” he added. According to PWC, the current size of the global media and entertainment market is $1.8 trillion.
The Indian market is expected to double in four years to cross RS.1 trillion, as per KPMG estimates.