E-City Digital Cinemas To Invest Rs 1 billion By 2007-08

Indiantelevision.com: E-City Digital Cinemas, part of the Essel Group, plans to invest Rs 1 billion ($22.2 million) in digitising 500 cinema theatres by 2007-’08. “We are investing Rs 1 billion and plan to have 500 digital theatres by FY 2008 in Mumbai, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh territories,” says E-City Ventures CEO Atul Goel.
The company will start delivering movies to the theatres via satellite by next month. Currently, the hard disk is physically distributed to the 22 theatres in Gujarat which it has taken on hire basis. But it plans to use the uplinking facility of Essel Shyam at Noida near Delhi.
Each theatre will have to invest Rs 2 million on the digital technology. E-City will make the investments and will pay fixed weekly theatre hire charges to the exhibitors. The contracts will be for a minimum period of five years. The company plans to target A-class towns where the current net collections are over Rs 100,000 per week. It plans to rake in revenues of Rs 2.5 billion by March-end 2009.
Last week, it had acquired 51 per cent in Mumbai-based exhibitor Shree Vijay Raj Entertainment & Software Ltd (SVRESL) for $5 million.

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