The Confederation of Indian Industry kick started a global marketing campaign for Indian films in Mumbai on Friday.
The major focus of the programme -- CineMint -- was on how to survive in the increasingly globalised market and means to tap the international arena for Indian films.
Speaking at the CineMint function, Sunil Lulla, chairman, CII Entertainment Sub-Committee and executive vice president, Sony Entertainment Television said, "Our film industry is growing by 2.5 per cent every year and we want this figure to rise. I hope such seminars will help to achieve that end."
Revealing some statistics on the number of cine goers in India, Lulla said: India, which has 12, 000 theatres sells around 320 crores tickets (3.2 billion) every year, while the US in spite of having 30,000 theatres sells only about 260 crore (2.6 billion) tickets.
Shravan Shroff, director of Shringar films and chairman of CineMint said few Bollywood producers have the necessary expertise to do business abroad and sell their films in overseas market. "I hope this event will help those who want to explore the overseas market," he added.
Director Shekhar Kapur, however, was not too enthusiastic about the American market and said, "It is very difficult for Bollywood films to survive in the US market where a producer has to spend at least $ 20 million to market his film. This figure is huge and therefore I feel that Bollywood should concentrate on Asian, Chinese or East European markets."
"What differentiates a Bollywood movie from others -- and people from around the world agree on this -- is the fact that one can sit with ones family and watch a Bollywood movie. Outsiders just don't understand how the Indian audience can sit and see a song, some dances, jokes and drama. But I must say that in spite of this we are the only industry who can stand up to competition from Hollywood," added Kapur.
Commenting about the film industry of other countries, Kapur said, "The Spanish, Italian and also to some extent French cinema has suffered considerably because of competition from Hollywood but we have always faced them."
"No wonder, therefore, that we are being mentioned in the Time magazine. We have survived and flourished and now it is time to market ourselves abroad so that we can generate more revenue," added Kapur.
Kapur also told the audience that broadband revolution will be the next big thing in the film industry and Bollywood should be prepared for it.
"If a film is released on broadband and people are willing to pay $ 10 to watch the movie at home it could revolutionise the entire process of film watching. Let's says 20 crore (200 million) people watch a film premier globally on broadband and pay $10 for the film. This amounts to a business of $2 billion. So there is a huge potential," said Kapur.
Citing the example of the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kapur said, "The film makers released the DVD on day 1. And this marketing strategy worked very well for them. So we too have to think on how to market our films properly from the very stage when the scripts of the films are written."