The industry must widen its target beyond the 12-34 year olds: Pramod Arora

Interview with Group president, PVR Limited

Superplexes can change the whole dimension of the game by addressing a larger market of 5-to-70 year olds, Pramod Arora tells Vanita Kohli-Khandekar

What are superplexes and why are you investing in them?

There are so many changes happening in entertainment. For example, HD has taken off. You don't know what the next disruptive technology in cinema could be. Flipkart was valued ten times more than (Kishore) Biyani's retail business. Someone could work out a smarter format. How then do we make our format more powerful?

Three years ago I started travelling to figure out what is happening in the world of cinema in India and across the globe. I visited AMC, Regal (large American multiplex chains), trying to figure out how the ecosystem there worked. One of the learnings was that the industry must widen its target beyond the 12-to-34 year olds. With superplexes, we are addressing a larger market of five to 70-year olds. That changes the whole dimension of the game. The idea with superplexes is to have cinemas where five-to-nine year olds can come in to watch films - with, say, Barbie seats, play areas and so on. The aim is to cultivate the film-going habit in younger people and to get senior people to come more often by giving them the things they want - special menus and ease of booking etc.

While we keep crying over low occupancy, the fact is we can improve occupancies by reaching out to this audience. For example, the seniors prefer 11 am in the mornings to come watch a film. The 12-34 age group in any case comes after 6 pm. Working out the details - interior decoration, space etc - took us almost two-and-a-half years. We researched almost everything, for example, young viewers prefer menus on apps but the seniors want to place an order with a person.

Besides the target audience, how are the superplexes different?

They will have digital cinema, 3D, Imax screen and 4D cinema all within a single complex. Each of them will have 15 screens. We will start with Noida, where the superplex will come up in the next nine months. Over the next two-and-a-half years, we plan four superplexes with an investment of Rs 200 crore (Rs 50 crore each against Rs 30 crore for a regular multiplex). These should break even in the next four-and-a-half years.

Why don't multiplex chains use the data they sit on - of who is watching what films, when and how frequently - to loop back into production studios? Also, do you use this data to improve walk-ins and reach out to consumers?

For the last three years, we have been trying to understand the data we collect and figure out how to utilise it. Our profitability has increased by 20 per cent by using data mining over the last two years. But the it is rather tricky. About 73 per cent of our tickets are sold offline and 27 per cent sold online. In fact, online has been increasing year on year. Last year, we sold Rs 62-crore worth of tickets (online or through an app) while this year we sold tickets worth Rs 170 crore.

While the online consumers have to fill in basic data anyway, the 73 per cent is also crucial. So four months ago, we set up a small machine at the box-office in Ambience mall (Delhi) where people would fill in their demographic data while buying tickets. But only a small percentage were willing to do that. Now we are trying to incentivise the sharing of demographic data by offering price offs or a free coffee with the ticket. If we can use this data well, we can actually plan and define the size of the multiplexes we build. Producers can use it to figure out what is working or not with different types of target audiences. However, no production house has asked for this data.

The big insights from data mining...

There is far more demand than we can cater to, there isn't enough entertainment content. Much of the programming is fairly hit and run. For example, we may play a film at 10 am when 10 pm is better for the people who are likely to see that movie. So they end up watching it on DVD or seeing a pirated version online since we don't give them as opportunity to see the film.

For example, in the US there is a website called Tugg.com. It works on creating a community of people who want to watch a film in a format - for example if you want to watch Mughal-e-Azamon a Sunday, at 3 pm, at PVR, in Ambience mall (New Delhi), you can start a community. If a certain percentage of people join in (and make it viable) then the film will be screened there at that time.

Tugg, therefore, becomes a platform that gets the audience together and talks to the distributors for a commission on the show. There is an opportunity to do something similar in India. Otherwise, what is the value of intellectual property in films after, say, eight or nine years? But we can keep creating communities that can use it again and again. For example, would a lot of people like to watch Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro on the big screen?
THE POPCORN MAN

• Pramod Arora is a real estate man who wandered into multiplexes and has stayed on. He was the COO at Oberoi Realty for under a year before moving to PVR Cinemas in 1996
• At PVR, he has handled all kinds of functions including, finance and technology, before becoming group president
• The disruptive technologies shaping both retail and entertainment fascinate him. Arora thinks that keeping an eye on them is critical for the survival of the multiplex format