Reliance Entertainment Pvt Ltd, a company of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, has launched its Video on Demand online services, Bigflicks.com. It mainly targets NRIs residing in United States, Canada, UK, Australia, West Asia and Europe. BigFlicks currently have around 200 movie titles in Hindi, English and various Indian languages. It will offer 1,000 movies for downloading within 2-3 months and 2,000 titles within 1 year. Cost for downloading a movie varies from $4.49 to $19.99.
The revenue model is based on downloading on rent or owning a title without advertisement, while the other model offer free online streaming with advertisements. These advertisements could be in the beginning of the movie or in the middle of the film.
The biggest constraint for this service in India is slow internet speeds. In India, it will sell and offer physical lending of VCDs and DVDs by opening 100 stores in top 50 cities. BigFlicks will launch first stores in Hyderabad, Pune and Chandigarh. It will also offer home delivery service in Indian cities. In 3 years, the number of outlets would go upto 500 and they would primarily function as neighbourhood stores.
The firm, part of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group which runs Adlabs Films Ltd, plans to invest $100 million in home video retail over five years, of which 75% is for offline venture and rest for online. In India, the online venture would gain steam once the broadband penetration increases, and may offer great potential as a Hollywood movie generates more revenues through home entertainment than through theatrical distribution.
