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Tag: Rajshri Group

  • Rajshri Media appoints Limelight as streaming content provider for its broadband website

    Rajshri Media appoints Limelight as streaming content provider for its broadband website

    MUMBAI: Rajshri Media, the digital entertainment arm of the Rajshri Group, has appointed content delivery network Limelight as the exclusive provider of streaming content delivery services for Rajshri.com, the recently launched broadband entertainment destination.

    Utilizing Limelight’s worldwide network, Rajshri.com will be able to deliver its library of content globally.

    As reported earlier, Rajshri.com, which aims to cater to the diaspora, was launched with the premiere of Vivah on the portal simultaneously with its theatrical release. Focusing on India centric video content, the site currently claims to serve more than 3,000 hours of full length Indian movies, music videos, TV shows, short films, documentaries and other video content and programming.

    The content offering is being scaled up and Rajshri.com will soon introduce new channels featuring content on spirituality, yoga, recipes, astrology and numerology. In addition, the website is also looking at original video programming, conceived and produced for distribution via new media to digitally connected consumers worldwide. The scalability of the Limelight network will ensure that viewers are provided with a high-quality media experience at all times, informs an official release.

    Rajshri Media managing director Rajjat A Barjatya said, “The non-resident Indian audience is estimated to be more than 25 million strong with an equally strong non-Indian audience. This audience is fragmented and difficult to reach through traditional media but connects very strongly with Indian entertainment, especially Bollywood. The penetration of broadband and 3G networks, especially in developed markets, gives us the ability to distribute rich content, including long form video, to consumers worldwide, including markets which traditional media has not been able to penetrate. We are proud to partner with Limelight and are happy to announce we have received a phenomenal response, having already crossed 4 million video streams within a fortnight of launch.”

    “We are delighted that Rajshri Media has chosen us as their exclusive partner to deliver high quality video content to audiences across the globe,” said Limelight Networks vice president Asia-Pacific Matthew H. Sturgess. “To make Rajshri’s vision a reality, our highly scalable next generation content delivery network enables them to simultaneously deliver huge video files–including feature films that are over three hours long–to audiences of any size, anywhere in the world.”

  • Rajshri launches broadband entertainment portal, to release ‘Vivah’ for viewers at $9.90

    Rajshri launches broadband entertainment portal, to release ‘Vivah’ for viewers at $9.90

    NEW DELHI: Rajshri Group, one of the oldest production and distribution houses in the country, has launched a broadband entertainment portal, www.rajshri.com, that will offer streaming and downloading of various forms of content including movies, music videos, concerts, and documentaries.

    Rajshri’s latest movie, Vivah, will be premiered on the portal simultaneously along with its theatrical release on Friday. This is the first time in India that a film is being made available on the internet at the day of its release.

    The downloading of Vivah will be at a payment of $9.9 through an international credit card, said Rajshri Media (P) Ltd managing director Rajjat Barjatya. The copies do not run the risk of being pirated because of a special software that has been used, he added.

    Rajshri Media (P) Ltd will be the group’s digital media initiatives arm. This will cover streaming services which users don’t have to pay for. Among the broad gamut of content available is the historic midnight speech of late Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru on 15 August 1947. “We are also soon going to add humor, management-related content and spiritualism to our site,” said Barjatya.

    Describing the new initiative as an “historic moment,” Barjatya said the company had been working on this project for the past two years. The aim seems to be converting the ‘non-consumers into consumers’ while attempting to break the stranglehold of piracy.

    Barjatya is also targeting about 25 million Indians abroad, NRIs and Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) put together, who are “extremely keen to stay in touch with their roots and will pay for rich and origial Indian content as against the pirated one.”

    About 51 per cent Indians abroad spent time daily on the net, he revealed. Besides, Indian content was also becoming extremely popular among non-Indians across the world.

    So how will the box office takings of Vivah, for instance, be a hit because of online viewing? “We are getting into a four screen scenario, instead of a two-screen one. Cinema theatres were always there, and then came TV, the big screen and the small screen. Now there is the internet and the mobile,” said Barjatya.

    “Each of these screens are a different experience and one cannot replace any of the other. It is one thing to see a film on the Net alone, and quite another doing so with the family on a TV set, or watching it in a dark hall with a lot of people, so there is no cutting into turfs,” he added.

    The delivery of movies through the internet could also cut down piracy. “If there is a viewer in say Finland, I can now get to him before the pirates can,” Barjatya said.

    A key feature of the site is that the movies can’t be pirated. “We have used a software which ‘wraps around the programme’ and while it is being streamed, it cannot be copied, nor downloaded. Even while it is ‘sitting’ on the hard disk for 72 hours, it cannot be made into a CD or DVD,” he said.

    The portal is also aimed at the tech-savvy younger audience. “The site has a lot of features. You can actually saute the film, slice and dice it, rate it, send a link to a friend and read what others have to comment about it,” Barjatya said.