Bigflix.com grabbing a bigger pie in the online segment

Durgesh Gupta - Televisionpoint.com | Mumbai
Bigflix.com, a part of Reliance Big Entertainment, is ambitious about establishing itself as the market leader in the movie rental business by adding 375 stores and grabbing a bigger pie in the online segment.

Within a year of its launch, the movie rental chain has opened 125 stores in 10 cities and has created a regular base of more than 80,000 subscribers. It plans to expand its footprint to 25 more cities by adding stores over the next three years.

The Reliance ADAG has invested Rs 160 crore on Bigflix and the group will pump in about Rs 200 crore in the coming three years. It has already grabbed 45 per cent market share in the video download section and hopes for aggressive growth on the back of fast-paced broadband penetration in the country.

In the largely unorganised movie rental business, Bigflix hopes to build on its strengths like accessibility, large infrastructure and huge content.

Speaking to Televisionpoint.com, Kamal Gianchandani, chief operating officer, Bigflix, says, "As a retail chain, subscribers are assured of brand consistency and better customer service. Multiple access points such as phone, the web, SMS, and physical stores will enhance accessibility and convenience. Moreover, it is the large content in foreign as well as 13 regional languages that will distinguish us in the largely disorganised sector."

Bigflix has around 20,000 movie titles in different languages. It believes this large content of old as well as new movies will also give an edge to the company over direct-to-home (DTH) providers and optical storage companies such as Moser Baer.

Gianchandani said video download is the future of the movie rental business. And that the increased Internet penetration and launch of Internet protocol television (IPTV) will boost the market for video downloads.

Along with the domestic market, the company's online division equally targets an estimated 25-million-strong non-resident Indian (NRI) population. The Bigflix website gets 50 million page views a month and receives more than 3 million visitors, 90 per cent of whom are NRIs.

To expand its subscriber base, Bigflix also has tie ups with businesses such as ICICI Bank, Big Bazaar, E-Zone and Spencer's Retail, which provide their customers discounted subscriptions of Bigflix on purchases and transactions. It is in the process of having a similar tie-up with travel portal, easygo.com.

Bigflix.com has partnered with Entriq, a company that provides content protection service through digital rights management (DRM). Limelight Networks, a leading content delivery network for digital media, is the exclusive provider of streaming content delivery services for the company.