Palador Pictures Raises $6 Million From Private Investors, NRIs

Here is one company that wants to ride on the Indian multiplex boom. Palador Pictures, a company that aggregates and distributes world cinema (films in non-Indian languages) in India, has raised $6 million from a group of private investors which include noted adfilm maker and director Mahesh Mathai, Srila Chaterjee and Simran Mulchandani (all based in Mumbai), besides from two New York-based NRIs Arun Banerjee and Vishal Aggarwal (see the release). The investors will pick up 15 per cent stake, valuing the company at $40 million.

Starting up

Palador, started some three years ago by ex-adman Gautam Shiknis and creative consultant Mo Polamar, has already invested $4 million to collect rights for some 900 films which include classics directed by legendaries like Chaplin, Keaton, Kurosawa, Kieslowski, Godard, Trauffaut, Kiarostami, Lynch and others. Its DVD collection is called The Olive Collection.

Palador plans to take the world cinema to Indian audiences (urban and rural) via an integrated distribution model that covers an exclusive DVD label, theatrical releases, video on demand and a dedicated television channel. Some 10 films from Palador’s catalogue have been released in India in the first quarter of 2007. The company, which plans to become an integrated media enterprise spanning production, content acquisition, programming and distribution in the areas of film, publishing, internet and radio, is eyeing revenues of $20 million by March 2009. Meanwhile, the company also announced that it has settled a dispute with UTV over the rights and ownership of certain titles.

The trend

Of late, film companies have been attracting investments, and the trend may continue. Says NRI investor Arun Banerjee, “It is important for NRIs to fund start-ups outside the technology construct. Investment in developing media companies is the safest bet for NRI investments.”

In the last few months, Indian film companies like The Indian Film Company of TV18 Group and UTV Pictures had raised $110 million and $70 million, respectively, from the Alternative Investment Market of London Stock Exchange. Bobby Bedi's Kaleidoscope Entertainment could be probably the first entertainment company to rope in classical venture capitalists like Kanwal Rekhi, Saurabh Srivastava, and angel investors like Pradeep Gupta (Cybermedia Group), and late Arun Kumar (of Hughes Software Systems). Late last year, Kaleidoscope also raised Rs 20 crore from the publishing group Anand Bazar Patrika.

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