26.6.08

Seventymm to come home in 40 cities

Movie rental portal Seventymm.com plans to invest $15 million over five years on expansion and promotion of its services.The company plans to launch its services in 40 cities by the end of 2009.And by the end of this year, it aims to be present in Pune, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. The VC-funded website currently delivers movies to its customers in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Chandigarh.Seventymm will spend around Rs 8-10 crore on mass media advertising in Q4 FY09. The portal has access to about 18,000 movie titles in English, Hindi and regional languages, apart from TV shows and documentary films. It has about 70,000 users who can rent movies via phone, email or SMS.
Over the next five years, Seventymm is targeting revenues of Rs 1,500 crore. Of this, some amount will come through digital download of movies.The company currently competes with players like Catchflix, Cinesprite and Clix Flix, which rent out DVDs through their websites.
In 2007, Seventymm acquired Delhi-based Madhouse, one of the first companies to offer online DVD rentals.
The burgeoning organised movie rental business is banking on the availability of home video titles and robust sales of DVD players in the country. According to Ficci-PwC estimates, the home video market is growing at 30% annually and is projected to grow at the pace of 70% over the next five years. The report estimates the current installed base of DVD players at about 47.4 million by the end of 2008.New entrants such as Nimbus’ Showtime and Reliance ADAG’s Big Flix plan to make huge investments on setting up retail stores.Nimbus’ Showtime will invest Rs 150 crore over the next three years. It plans to have 140 stores in 40 cities in the coming year.
Reliance ADAG is also planning to open about 500 Big Flix stores by the end of FY09 in 30 cities apart from its franchisee outlets.
Seventymm, however, has no plans to set up retail outlets.

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