MOVIES ON THE MOVE
Mobile digiplex a hit in India
There is no cinema in the town where Mohammad Rafiq lives, but that hasn’t stopped him from seeing most of the new Hindi screen hits released in the last two months.
No, he’s not watching pirated DVDs or downloads. Instead, the movies come to him, courtesy of Picture Time, a company that is finding a healthy market for its mobile cinemas in movie-mad India.
One of the places where Picture Time has brought its digiplex is Jashpurnagar, Mr Rafiq’s home town in Chhattisgarh state, about 1,200 kilometres southeast of New Delhi.
In the past, the 50-year-old civil servant said, whenever people wanted to watch a movie, they would have to travel 100km to Ranchi, the capital of neighbouring Jharkhand state, or Ambikapur, 100km to the west, because there is no cinema in Jashpurnagar.
“Picture Time drove into our city two months ago and has been camped here ever since,” he said.
India, a country with 1.3 billion people, has only around 9,000 cinemas including 2,200 multiplexes in big cities. On an average, it has only 12 multiplex screens per one million people compared with 117 per million people in the United States.
But the US$3-billion Hindi film industry, despite its rising status as a high-profile Indian export and growing by double digits each year, grosses only about one-fifth of what the movie industry earns in North America. China, with a similar population and level of development, might seem a fairer comparison, but its cinema industry earns three times that of India.
The primary reason for the poor performance is low penetration of cinemas throughout the country. Thousands of single-screen cinemas have closed in recent years as they cannot withstand competition from multi-screen complexes. The impact has been felt most keenly in smaller towns.
Picture Time founder Sushil Chaudhary, an Indian entrepreneur who has spent time in the United States, has been trying to fill this gap in the last two years by taking cinema to the most remote corners of the country. He now has 37 trucks serving half a dozen states and plans to expand the fleet to 100 to serve more states in the next few months.
The modus operandi of Picture Time is simple. It rolls into a town of 100,000 population or smaller carrying an air-conditioned, inflatable structure that can seat 150 people. Each unit has a 6x2-metre screen, full Internet of Things (IoT) functionality and the digital hardware and software necessary to present movies.
It leases a plot of land and publicises its arrival via the ubiquitous local auto-rickshaws. The digiplex and related equipment takes just 2.5 hours to assemble, and it’s ready to screen new movies four or five times daily.
Each mobile cinema is staffed by seven to eight people who are good at multitasking. They sell tickets from under a canopy, repair electrical fittings and projectors as needed, and also sell snacks such as samosas and paneer puffs at intermission.
The cinema boasts state-of-the-art stereo sound, neon signage for exists and picture quality on par with multiplexes. Mr Chaudhary says Picture Time provides
appealing entertainment without compromising on the cinematic experience and ambience. “We need to meet certain standards,” he told Asia Focus, adding that the digiplex structure is made from all-weather, fire-retardant material.
Yet unlike a multiplex where a ticket may cost anywhere between 150 and 500 rupees (65 to 220 baht), tickets at a Picture Time digiplex cost 60 rupees for shows running between noon and midnight, and 45 baht for morning shows.
The potential of Picture Time is clear to Anup Kumar Jha, who joined the company as regional operations manager after 14 years with PVR Cinemas, one of India’s biggest multiplex operators with more than 700 screens in 50 major cities.
“There is not much difference between a multiplex and our digiplex except that we cater to a family crowd only,” he told Asia Focus. Viewers have to settle for plain chairs rather than comfy cinema seats, but the product on the screen is the same as in the big-city movie hall.
While multiplexes also screen Hollywood releases, Picture Time offers Hindi and local-language movies only, which is fine for most of the people it aims to reach.
Mr Chaudhary, a civil engineer by profession, has set up a factory that can produce 25 digiplex units in a month. “In next few years, our focus is to have 3,000 screens in the country,” he said. He expects to add 420 new employees to his existing team of 80 people. In September, he introduced digiplex-on-truck units in Delhi and Hyderabad.
The company also believes its IoT-enabled mobile units have the potential to do more than just show movies. “The DigiPlex is geared up to serve as an e-commerce solution provider, citizen service centre and can even house a micro ATM. This holds the promise of a revolution,” it declares on its website.
Like other cinema halls and multiplexes, portable digiplexes also screen government and private advertisements before movies start and immediately after the intermission. They also screen trailers for upcoming Bollywood releases. The Bollywood blockbuster Baahubali-2 recently premiered on Picture Time.
Mumbai filmmaker Satish Kaushik, who is branching out into regional Haryanvi films, has partnered with Picture Time to release them in Haryana state.
Mr Chaudhary has filed seven patents for Picture Time and claims sole ownership of the digiplex-on-wheels concept.
That could put him at odds with Caravan Talkies, an affiliate of UFO Moviez, a digital cinema distribution network and in-cinema advertising platform that claims a much larger potential audience through 114 movies-on-wheels vans that serve 14 states.
But unlike Picture Time, Caravan Talkies’ vans carry only projection and sound systems, not complete portable cinemas. They screen movies in the open air after sundown and their audiences sit on the ground.
Admission to the movies is free, with costs covered by sponsors including Hindustan Unilever, Parle, Marico, Dabur, ITC and other local and multinational companies that use the vans to advertise their wares to rural markets where incomes are on the rise.
“There is not much difference between a multiplex and our digiplex except that we cater to a family crowd only” ANUP KUMAR JHA Regional operations manager, Picture Time