Balaji Telefilms bets on streaming and cinema as television fades

MUMBAI: The Indian production house is pivoting hard to digital, with Rs 350 crore in orders and blockbusters in the pipeline Balaji Telefilms is ditching its television past for a streaming future.

The Mumbai-based production house, once synonymous with prime-time soaps, is now racing towards digital dominance, and its chief reckons motion pictures will soon eclipse everything else.

Speaking to investors after second-quarter results, Sanjay Dwivedi, group chief executive and chief financial officer, laid out a stark transition. Television, the company’s creative bedrock, is in decline. Broadcasters are slashing budgets, several long-running serials wrapped this quarter, and episodic revenues have flatlined at Rs 24 lakh-25 lakh per hour. “I’m not saying TV is going to die,” Dwivedi said, “but connected TV will be the play.”

The action is elsewhere. Balaji’s digital arm is roaring, with 93 shows live on its new app Kutingg and three YouTube originals racking up 400m views since launch. Active subscribers have crossed 11m. The company is shifting to a hybrid subscription-and-advertising model to widen its reach, whilst building a formidable business-to-business pipeline. Current orders stand at Rs 350 crore, including Rs 250 crore from Netflix and Rs 42 crore from Zee Studios, with Amazon, Sony and Star also in the mix.

Motion pictures are the real prize. Balaji’s Malayalam-Telugu bilingual Vrusshabha hits cinemas in December, followed by Bhoot Bangla with Akshay Kumar and Vvan, a collaboration with TVF. The strategy is ruthlessly commercial: pre-sell 85-90 per cent of costs through distribution deals and co-production agreements, locking in returns before release.

The company recently raised Rs 131 crore, Rs 65 crore earmarked for films, Rs 33 crore for music rights and digital content, the rest for general corporate purposes. Not a rupee has been touched yet. Dwivedi’s timeline is clear: this year stays muted, but from the next financial year’s first quarter, “you will see a clear upside.”

In three years, he predicts, motion pictures will lead revenues and profits, trailed by digital, then television. The old broadcast model is being replaced by streaming commissions, “Whatever decline you are seeing in TV will be more than compensated by growth in OTT.”

For a company that built its name on daily soap operas, the pivot is dramatic. But in India’s entertainment gold rush, Balaji isn’t mourning the past. It’s betting everything on what comes next.