Vistaar Religare Film Fund, which was launched towards the beginning of this year by Religare Enterprises along with Vistaar Entertainment, now plans to make 50 films in five years. Post launch, the fund has invested in four projects, including two domestic and two international films.
This includes Awasthi starring veteran actor Pankaj Kapoor, thriller Stone Man starring Kay Kay Menon and Arbaz Khan, Finding Lenny and The Jonzes, the latter starring Demi Moore and David Duchovny. The total corpus of the fund is Rs 200 crore and would be close-ended in nature with a lock-in period of five years. It is India ?s only film fund with a corpus of 10% committed by the promoters. The fund is awaiting approval from the Securtities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and envisages capturing the untapped potential within the country and produce ?entertaining, challenging, culturally relevant cinema?.
Sheetal Talwar, CMD, while speaking exclusively to FE, said, ?For the last one year these films are at various stages of production.? Talwar also disclosed that the fund has identified an additional four scripts ? both domestic and international, which will soon get into production. ?Over the time frame of the fund, which is five years, we hope to do 50 films,? said Talwar.
The fund has an investment management committee which helps in deciding the commercial viability of a script, following which the project is finalised. Besides Talwar, the committee includes R Balakrishnan, film maker and national creative director, Lowe India, Bhavna Talwar, film maker, actor Pankaj Kapoor, film commentator Subhash Jha, ad film maker Johny Pintoo, Kanwaljit Singh, co-founder and managing director of Helion Venture Partners, and Shachindra Nath, group chief operating officer of Religare Enterprises.
While the entertainment and media industry continues to outperform the Indian economy, the Indian film industry alone recorded a cumulative growth of 17% betweem 2004-2007. In 2007, the Indian film industry registered a growth of 14% over the previous year, marginally lower than the forecasted growth of 15%. On an overall basis, the Indian film industry stood at Rs 9,600 crore in 2007, up from Rs 8,500 crore in 2006. It is projected to grow by 13% over the next five years, reaching Rs 17,600 crore in 2012 from the present Rs 9,600 crore in 2007, nearly double its present size.