We’re into movies, TV, broadband and wireless: Kacon Sethi, CEO, K Sera Sera

Mumbai-based entertainment company K Sera Sera is looking beyond movies. The company, which is primarily into film production and distribution, hopes to increase its revenues from TV – an area it has recently forayed with the formation of subsidiary Twenty Twenty Television – to about 30 per cent in the next two to three years.

The subsidiary has lined up some six to seven-odd shows including a serial ‘Kashish’ on ZEE that is slated to go on-air this March, comedy ‘Hum Paanch’ (on ZEE again), whose erstwhile producer was Balaji Telefilms. Plus, there’s a show on Sony, a one-hour horror show titled ‘Darna Mana Hai’ on STAR One and ‘Bold and Beautiful Wives’, ‘Dulhan’ and ‘NDA’. These shows come in addition to two half-hour programmes – Aaon Bahen Chugli Kare and Kuch Love Kuch Masti – currently on-air on SaharaOne.

Creative alliances – something K Sera Sera is known for in the movie business thanks to its tie-up with Ram Gopal Varma – characterises its television business as well. For the projects on SaharaOne, for instance, the company has tied up with veteran actor-director Girish Malik’s production house Clapstem Productions.

Another veteran Ravi Rai will work on a couple of projects, while Rakhi Tandon, who became popular as Sweety in ‘Hum Paanch’ a few years ago, is the creative supervisor for the ‘Bold and Beautiful Wives’. Tandon, incidentally, will also act in the show.

Besides TV, the company is also bullish about its broadband and wireless businesses. For the broadband business, in particular, the company has entered into a five-year, non-exclusive deal with VSNL, a key broadband service provider, and is looking at tie-ups with other service providers in the country.

On the wireless front, the company had tied up with mauj.com to provide branded mobile applications to cellphone users for its movie Vaastu Shastra starring Sushmita Sen. The company provided the content for a range of services including ringtones, singtones, games, wallpapers etc. Clearly, wireless applications is a promising area for the company given the number of releases on hand.

“Wireless is an area where we have taken small steps, but we should scale up operations steadily,” says Sethi.

K Sera Sera has four films under production – ‘James’, ‘Sarkar’, ‘Darna Jaroori Hai’ and ‘My Wife’s Murder’, which has Anil Kapoor in the lead.

Of this, ‘Sarkar’, which will be released between June-August 2005, is the company’s most ambitious venture starring Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan. The investment in the movie is approximately Rs 15-17-crore, which crosses K Sera Sera’s average investment of Rs 4.5-6-crore per movie.

Sethi says that the gameplan is to gradually move in making blockbusters, and ‘Sarkar’ will lead the way in this area. “During the first two years, the attempt is to keep cost of production down, but going forward we should dabble in big-budget projects.”

Typically, profitability is taken at 15 per cent of the cost of production with distribution handled in-house. The company puts a heavy premium on promoting its movies and begins talks with parties concerned months in advance.

Distribution of movies produced by other banners is something it has ventured into of late. The company is handling films such as ‘Rok Sako To Rok Lo’ in Delhi, Rituparno Ghosh’s ‘Raincoat’ and the Shahid Kapoor-starrer ‘Dil Maange More’ in Nizam (which is Hyderabad along with some areas of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka).

It recently acquired the rights of distributing Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s ‘Black’ in Nizam. The movie will be released on February 4, and stars Amitabh Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee.

© 2005 agencyfaqs!