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Mumbai, Mar 4: Ranbaxy group company Religare, an integrated financial services institution, and Vistaar Entertainment have joined hands to float a fund to finance films. The fund, with an initial corpus of around Rs 200 crore, would be close ended, with a lock-in period of five years. Mumbai-based Vistaar is a holding company of The Friday Fund and WSG Pictures. The new entity, Vistaar Religare Film Fund (VRFF), has filed for a SEBI approval as a venture capital fund.
While Vistaar will bring to table its entertainment expertise, Religare will drive the interest of the investors. VRFF is a 50:50 joint venture, but Religare will dilute 24% of its shares to institutions or high network individuals, who would strategically contribute to the growth of the company. But it will not be a retail product. The primary focus of the company will be to exhume new script writers and create a library of scripts, termed ‘Writers' Cradle’. It will then either fund the films or act as intermediary and find the script writer a producer. In case of the latter, VRFF will take a small percentage as fees.
The company is also planning to set up an advisory board consisting of eminent personalities from the advertising and film world. It will screen scripts and decide the commercial viability of a film. The percentage of investment will depend on the monetary recovery of the project. There will be governance within the fund - both on the debt side and equity. The company is also open to working with other production houses. Films will include both Hindi and regional language cinema.
Sheetal Talwar, MD, Vistaar Religare, said, “Over the years, the film funding scenario has changed. Earlier, producers took loan from private sources or from distributors. This was replaced by banks that funded 50% of the production cost. In the last two years, with the corporatisation of films, corporates spend the money and own the rights and the revenue. The role of the producer has been reduced to that of an intermediary who just gets a percentage of the profit. At VRFF, we are now moving from corporate/production based model to a bank based model.”
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