By Arun Kumar, IANS
Washington : New York-based digital media company Saavn is working on a new strategy to tap the “hundreds of millions” dollar market for Bollywood films and music in North America.
Saavn has already secured deals with more US media companies than anyone else to distribute Bollywood films. It now plans to provide what co-founder and general manager Vin Bhat calls “an even bigger wave of Bollywood entertainment in 2008” going beyond the South Asian audience.
“This is a multi-level strategy that requires new media expertise, strong relationships with music and movie executives, and major brand commitments,” Bhat told IANS in an email interview. “It’s difficult for me to elaborate as most of these deals are still confidential.”
Asked what the current and potential size of the market was for Bollywood fare in North America, Bhat said, “In all honesty, it is tough to accurately answer because of the rampant piracy of free and paid products, online and in physical retail stores.”
“This is further complicated by the overall nature of the industry, not including bar codes on legitimate DVDs, lack of accurate tracking in ticket sales, etc.”
But “based on what we’ve pieced together, we believe that the market could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars”, he added.
“The great thing about Bollywood is that it appeals to all age groups – from the young child practising a Bollywood dance for the next community event to the grandmother who has watched Bollywood movies from the very beginning,” Bhat said about his buyers.
“Over our current buyers online, we’re generally seeing that 60-70 percent are South Asians while the remainder comes from other groups such as Southeast Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans, Eastern Europeans and also the general market.”
Asked about Saavn’s market strategy to tap this market, particularly the young South Asians, Bhat said, “Many of these youth bred on American culture do have some part of their lives rooted in South Asian culture.
“This is a pretty wide range – from little to no exposure to Bollywood to an all-out immersion into it while growing up.”
“In both cases, youth have been exposed to it and our job is two-fold – to connect with the existing fans of Bollywood and then to re-invite others who were exposed at a young age to give it another chance,” said Bhat.
“For the second group, we’re finding that people who rejected Bollywood as youth start to embrace once they get older (25+).”
“The easy part is just making the content available easier,” he said when asked about what he was doing to break the ethnic barrier and go beyond the South Asian audiences.
With VOD (video on demand), Internet and mobile deployments, people don’t have to go out and find 80 (of the 35,000) movie screens that show Bollywood movies, Bhatt said.
“Because stores like Wal-Mart will likely never carry Bollywood movies on their shelves, fans of the genres can find Bollywood movies on their cable operators’ VOD services.”
“We’re in 11 million cable homes today such as Time Warner Cable, work with over 18 different Internet services such as iTunes, and have deals with three major mobile carriers such as Verizon Wireless. Because of that, Bollywood can find its audience with much less friction,” he added.
A venture of the RCN, a premier cable TV, phone and Internet service provider with its own advanced fibre-optic network, Saavn will add two special Bollywood packages to RCN’s comprehensive VOD selections in 2008.
Another initiative with Boost Mobile will offer Bollywood ring tones directly on its mobile phones.
Saavn is now delivering a wide selection of Bollywood music videos and movies to over one million RCN customer connections in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Washington DC metropolitan areas.