'Bigflix should break even by the third quarter of next year'

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: Bigflix.com, the online and offline movie rental business of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), has completed a year of operations. In just one year, it has managed to get a registered membership base of 80,000. In an exclusive interview with FE’s Pritha Mitra Dasgupta, the COO of Bigflix, Kamal Gianchandani, says 2009-10 is going to be crucial. While the company hopes to break even this financial year, Gianchandani admits that the home video business is anything but easy and that it is extremely process-oriented and process-driven. Excerpts:

What is the size of the online and offline movie rental business in India? Since Bigflix has completed one year, what is the company’s current market share?

Different people will give different numbers for the current size (online and offline put together), as there is no formal compiled research which anyone can share. The reason is that this market is extremely fragmented. There are a number of video stores and their revenues are neither accounted for, nor recorded. Our best guess is that the current size is roughly around Rs 700-750 crore. This is based on the number of video libraries that operate in different parts of the country. Currently, we are not sharing our revenue numbers because this is only the end of our first year of operations.

But in terms of the offline market, we have got a substantial market share. We are present in 10 cities with 112 stores and we are growing month-on-month at about 15-20%. One needs to keep in mind that we started from a small base and this is only our first year of operation. So, there may be shrinkage of this percentage growth as we go along. As the base becomes bigger, this percentage growth will go down.

Which division is contributing more revenue, online or offline?

In terms of members who are acquired through offline and online, the split is 75:25. In terms of usage pattern, the split is almost 55:45. What happens is we have a common package with online and offline put together. After they become members, people tend to use only the home delivery service. As far as revenue is concerned we have taken it as composite.

And the number of subscribers you have for your online and offline movie rental business...

We have a subscriber base of about 80,000 for the rental business and very high page views for video-on-demand.