Adlabs to buy 51% in Synergy Comm

NEW DELHI: The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group-owned Adlabs Films is acquiring a majority stake in a television content producer — Synergy Communications for an undisclosed amount. Synergy Communications, which produced Kaun Banega Crorepati, is a privately held firm headed by Siddhartha Basu.

The acquisition marks Adlabs foray in the television content business. The investment will be subject to all applicable Sebi regulations and other approvals.

“While we are acquiring a 51% in Synergy Communications, operational control will remain with the original promoters, who will continue to manage the day to day business affairs,” said Manmohan Shetty, chairman & managing director, Adlabs Films.

He added, “by March ’08 we want the television content business to be one of the important divisions at Adlabs that contributes sizeable amount of revenues to the overall pie. The investment will be used for enhancing Synergy’s financial strength, production operations and scaling up of the content to include popular fiction and non-fiction content including reality and lifestyle shows.

“We may scale up the television production business and add a whole new repertoire of youth-based content to it. We will also look at developing content for international platforms,” said Pooja Shetty, director, Adlabs Films.

Synergy Communication has done over 30 televised series and produced over 2,000 hours of television content. The company produced several popular shows like, India’s Child Genius, University Challenge and Mastermind India.

Currently, they have three shows on air; Bluff Master, a unique game show on Star One, Mum Tum Aur Hum, another unique game show featuring a mother and child on Star Plus and Heartbeat. Jhalak Dhikla Ja, an adaptation of Dance with Stars (BBC format), started on Thursday on Sony.