Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines. Once a
business magnate, now the chairperson of Reliance Group, Anil Ambani seem to
have taken cue from this saying a lot and had continued toeing the line from
the problems that kept surfacing in his life. Somehow, his ‘never say die’
conduct has helped him to scramble his way out from the deepest pits of hard
luck, failing times, people failing him and dust off all the negativity and
start yet again. And this is precisely why his entertainment business is doing
phenomenally well even as he walks the tight ropes of debt.
Anil made an advent into the world of entertainment in 2005
with his acquisition of a majority share in Adlabs Films. At that time, he
looked like a self-starter tapping into the massive potential of the
entertainment sector that it had to offer. Albeit he started off with cashing
in on with the connections that his wife Tina Ambani already had in the
industry, overseas, he carved out a niche for himself and not just figuratively
but literally. At that time, when he started the film business, the people
working there were operating in a fashion very akin to a corporate studio where
the sole purpose was to acquire films, distribute and market them and, over a
period of time, either making profits or losses. His vision was to basically
create an end-to-end entertainment conglomerate.
Later in 2007, Adlabs signed a deal with Rave Entertainment,
to take control over 23 new screens in north India. During the same year it was
already into negotiations to buy Bangalore-based animation company Anright
Infomedia. At that time Anil’s plan was clear. He wanted to control the entertainment
industry after setting his sight the power behemoth while at that time; he was
already the tycoon who held the third largest telecom company in India. Later
that week, Ambani announced the simultaneous rollout of his direct-to-home and
IPTV services.
That year, in 2007, Anil also rolled out his radio business
with Big FM, churning out radio channels in 45 cities that made it as big as
Sun TV which had 44 channels at the time. Having ventured into the gaming
business already by that time, his gaming company Zapak had 1 million
registered users already by 2007 and was in the process of setting Zapak cafes
across 30 cities to offer high-end gaming services at a price. In gaming he had
plans to invest $100 million over the next three years in people, technology,
content, and distribution then. In 2008, Zapak set out to launch 150 gaming
zones all across India till March 2009 with an initiative to provide young
gamers original legal content to play and buy for an extended entertainment at
home. And then in 2010, the group acquired a 50% stake in Codemasters, the
British game developer best known for the Colin McRae series.
As regards the radio and TV businesses, both were demerged
into a separate company, which was listed on bourses as Reliance MediaWorld in
2009. Subsequently, the company added television business to its portfolio and
changed the name to Reliance Broadcast Networks.
Anil went larger than life when it came to production of
movies and distribution of them. And
that’s precisely well it worked so well relatively in comparison to his other
businesses. His Reliance Entertainment announced a splashy entry into Hollywood
in 2009, planning to “develop" films with George Clooney’s Smokehouse
Productions, Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions, Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment,
Chris Columbus’ 1492 Pictures and Nicolas Cage’s Saturn Productions.
In the same year, Anil Ambani closed a deal with the movie
studio DreamWorks SKG in order to form a new movie venture. 26. It also bagged the official
direct-to-home (DTH) partnership for the T20 cricket Indian Premier League with
a bid of $31.16 million. Thereafter, it partnered with Los Angeles-based
Digital Domain Productions to set up 3D stereo production services studios in
Mumbai and London.
But in 2015, the company changed its business model and
stopped all acquisitions and started looking at joint ventures with leading
Bollywood filmmakers’ companies. Beginning with Phantom Films, a company formed
by Anurag Kashyap, Vikas Bahl, Vikramaditya Motwane and Madhu Mantena, Reliance
began its new journey, with Kashyap’s period drama, Bombay Velvet. Things took
a different turn along with Phantom’s critically acclaimed Masaan (2015) and
Udta Punjab (2016) and the numbers at the box office for both the films spiked.
What started as a studio transformed into a conglomerate in
its own right and it seemed to have got a sense of projects from its inception.
Reliance’s age-old Hollywood partnership with Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks
Studios taught it the efficacy of the model and today Reliance Entertainment is
one of the leading entertainment platforms in India.
To sum up, Anil might be waging a war on debt, but in
entertainment he still is acing his game.
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