The two companies have decided to
integrate their full operations and technology and use their combined
energies to develop and consolidate their market position. Post the
merger across content, technology and operations, the new venture will
serve their existing 600 digital cinema theaters across the country.
KSS’s Satish Panchariya will be the Chairman of the new company and
UMW’s Ashish Bhandari will be the Managing Director.
Speaking on the joint venture, Ashish
Bhandari, Co-Founder and Joint Managing Director, United
Mediaworks said, “We are really excited to partner with K Sera Sera, as
our goal has always been to support the growth of the Media and
Entertainment industry. With this merger, we are aiming to expand our
presence across India and create a benchmark for the entire industry in
terms of technology and quality services. This collaboration is also an
effort to revive and support the single screen theatres that face tough
competition from the multiplexes in the industry.”
To fuel their expansion plans, both the
companies plan to invest INR 100 crores over the next two to three
years. This investment will be used to build state-of-art and scalable
digital cinema technology and on ground servicing, while assisting in
digital content security and distribution of the films. Over the next 2
years, the joint venture is aiming to capture 25% market share with
presence in 2000 screens across India.
Adding to the same, Vineeta Dwivedi,
CEO, K Sera Sera Digital Cinema Pvt. Ltd. said, “By joining forces with
United Mediaworks and bringing our teams together, we will build on each
other’s strengths and bring down our operational costs. We offer
producers and exhibitors better services and easier management and hope
to be the most dependable and reliable digital cinema provider in the
country. The country’s robust cinema industry will benefit by the coming
together of our two companies.”
As part of their growth strategy, the
two companies aim at reaching out to advertisers, targeting both,
national and regional players and offer them pan India reach. Both the
companies are working together to build a common technology platform for
content acquisition, content processing and field servicing. The new
platform will not only provide cost effective solutions to both
multiplexes and single screen theatres, but also offer advertisers a
wide reach across the country for better ROIs. Additionally, the
companies will mutually work towards delivering best quality services
and reaching out to the untapped market segments of India. They intend
to serve the Indian cinema industry with best products and services. The
exisiting workforce will remain unaffected in both of the companies.
United Mediaworks has a strong presence
in Bihar, Jharkhand, UP, Gujarat, West Bengal and Karnataka. Whereas K
Sera Sera is present in the entire Hindi belt including Delhi, UP,
Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh,
Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.Going forward the new
venture will look at capturing more markets across southern and eastern
India.
