Video-on-demand and online movie rental company BIGFlix is planning to expand its business to almost 15 tier-II cities which include Lucknow , Baroda, Mangalore and Meerut. The company will spend 25% of its investment (around Rs 112.5 crore) in FY09-10 to target smaller towns and cities across India.
The key areas of focus for the Reliance BIG Entertainment company this year will be to strengthen its online service presence in major cities of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. Kamal Gianchandani, COO of BIGFlix.com, said, ?We are looking at investing 50-55% of our total investment for the current financial year in building our online business for smaller cities.?
Initially, the company faced some challenges in terms of logistics, system integration and delivering services to customers on time. Thus, a certain portion of their spending will also be channelised towards brand-building, technology, customer relationship management (CRM) and logistics, for increased penetration.
According to Gianchandani, ?The home video business in India is flourishing. Places like Hyderabad and Bangalore offer huge appetite for movies and the market for DVDs is good there. We have experienced a good demand from tier-II cities in terms of registrations on our website. Thus we are planning to explore more markets, especially down south.? However, places like Chennai and Tamil Nadu pose a huge challenge for the company since it takes a lot of time for the south Indian movies to reach the DVD platform.
In terms of content acquisition, BIGFlix acquires most titles that are legal in the market. Currently, it has a library of around 21, 000 titles and adds about 300-350 movie titles every year on an average. ?We are aggregators of content and have tied up with distributors like Shemaroo, T-series, BIG Entertainment, Saregama and so on,? added Gianchandani.
BIGFlix currently offers home delivery service for movies in 10 cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Chandigarh, Pune and Indore. The company has an active user base of 80, 000 customers pan-India.