Bollyphonic

GUESS who���s watching Hindi films on mobile phones and downloading old Kishore Kumar tunes from the Apple Store? It���s the NRI Hindi film buff ��� who enjoys a hi-tech edge over Indian counterparts. And Bollywood content providers too are coming up with brand new services and products targeted at the growing non-resident Indian market in countries such as the US, Canada, Britain, Dubai, Mauritius, Fiji, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia.

The numbers are definitely big and growing fast enough to attract niche marketing efforts. Take the recently released Salaam-e-Ishq, for instance. The film opened at 350 screens in the international market (compared with 800 in India) and grossed around $2.5 million over the first weekend in global markets alone.

The Market

Industry sources estimate the non-resident market for Bollywood at 50 million people, including NRIs & PIOs and Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans mainly in the US, UK, Dubai, South Africa and the Far East. Revenues from the overseas market are pegged at around $79.5 million or roughly a third of the total industry revenues. While Indian producers and distributors have a big presence in most of the countries with big NRI markets, Bollywood is also planning niche films to cater mainly to this segment. No surprise then that this market is being targeted through different media with special hi-tech and niche offerings.

The Tech Connection

An example of an IT company reaching out specially to Bollywood fans in the US, UK, Singapore and Europe is Intel. In a tie-up with UK-based Bollywood distributor Eros International Plc, Intel will make on-demand entertainment content available on its Viiv technology-based PCs. ���Our goal is to accelerate the availability of broadband-delivered entertainment into the home. We are co-marketing exciting new services and experiences with companies like Eros, to those consumers who want to enjoy online digital content in the living room,��� says Hitendra Naik, who���s responsible for international content alliances at Intel, California. While the ���Bollywood on Demand��� service could still take some time to reach Indian homes, it will be aggressively marketed to NRIs and 10 million homes being targeted in three years by the two companies.

Besides broadband Internet, the other gizmo that is taking Bollywood content to NRIs in a big way is the mobile phone. ���The mobile now provides an additional distribution network for Bollywood content to customers overseas. We are a global company and our new Bollywood mobile initiative is focused at the Indian diaspora overseas in North America, UK, Middle East and parts of Asia. We believe that making movies available via the mobile distribution medium will act as a catalyst in reaching out to the global audience and going forward, the medium presents the opportunity to make the content available to over 127 countries where Bollywood movies are viewed,��� says Bobby Srinivasan, CEO and President, Roamware Inc, a Silicon Valley-based company that offers voice and data roaming solutions.

The company has recently tied up with the GSM Association, Hungama Mobile and Bollywood film-maker Sanjay Gupta to premiere three Bollywood short movies for the mobile medium at the GSMA���s 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.

The Opportunity

���The Internet and cable on demand are very suitable mediums to reach out to overseas Indian audiences. We find that 77% of the monthly traffic at our Bollywood website comes from Indians overseas and we have tied up with 70-plus carriers in over 30 countries for the distribution of Indian content through broadband, IPTV, cable on demand, broadband Internet and mobiles. There���s a big opportunity in the international markets to distribute Bollywood content such as films and music through new media channels. And considering that 40-45% of revenues for Bollywood comes from the Indian diaspora, it makes a lot of sense to tap the new screens such as mobile screens and PCs which are becoming more popular with Indians overseas than the conventional theatres and home videos,��� feels Neeraj Roy, MD & CEO of Hungamamobile, a leading entertainment portal.

���Globally, Indians are seen as a tech-savvy and affluent ethnic group and different overseas markets will adopt different distribution channels. Moreover, the NRI Bollywood audience will demand content available to them simultaneously as it is released in India. This creates a big business opportunity for technology driven distribution channels,��� he adds.

Naik, too, agrees that the tech-savvy South Asian consumers located in many parts of the US, Canada and UK would be the early adopters of the Intel Viiv technology and Eros��� service. ���In recent years, there has also been a staggering growth of crossover audiences in countries such as Germany, who would love to supplement the new releases they���ve viewed in the past with access to classics such as Sholay, which they may have heard about, but have not yet been physically able to purchase for viewing in the living room,��� he says.

The Marketing

And while Intel plans to co-promote the new ���Bollywood on Demand��� through Intelentertainment.com and Viiv Entertainment Pass; Roamware is excited about making Bollywood content available to its customer base in over 100 countries. Eros is planning a marketing campaign for the ���B on Demand��� through the retail route in UK and USA. ���We are in talks with retail chains such as WalMart and are looking at a niche marketing route. Intel is already in similar tie-ups with various entertainment content providers such as NBC and Universal and will also lend its marketing muscle to the Bollywood service,��� says Kishore Lulla, CEO of Eros International.

Along with NRIs, the audiences for Hindi films are going mainstream too in countries such as France, Spain and Brazil. Russia has long been a market for Indian films. So technology could well provide the recipe to add global masala to the Bollywood script.