Media company Percept and Kishore Biyani's Future Group have formed a 50:50 joint venture, Bollywood Retail, to sell Bollywood merchandise. They would invest Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) initially.
The JV will be set up in about 8-10 cities, including Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore, Indore, Jaipur, Pune, Delhi and Mumbai. The investment is expected to provide significant synergies to the Future Group, which has a large advertisement budget and aligns well with the group's businesses such as Future Media, which has interests in media and advertising.
Recently, Indivision, the private equity arm of Future Capital, picked up 10 per cent in Percept for nearly Rs 65 crore (Rs 650 million). The deal valued Percept at Rs 650 crore (Rs 6.5 billion).
Commenting on the JV, Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani said, "Through this partnership with Percept, we hope to bring a unique touch and feel of the Bollywood
experience to the consumer."
Percept had earlier set up Bollywood Corporation Private Limited to create and own intellectual property rights assets with the Bollywood theme. These included Bollywood cafes, walk-throughs, hall of fame, Bollywood museums, Bollywood theme parks and merchandising, among others.
The new JV will source Bollywood IPR and software from Percept's Bollywood Corporation and use retail infrastructure from the Future Group, a release from Percept said.
Percept Joint Managing Director Shailendra Singh said, "Bollywood merchandise is just the first of many things to result from this partnership.The target audience has clearly been demarcated and while we will cater to both international and domestic markets, we will look at a 70:30 ratio in terms of target marketing.
We will use Future Group's expertise in the retail business to market and leverage Bollywood merchandising."