Indus Media to launch USD 50 mn fund by September

Indus Media Entertainment, a Singapore-based pure-play entertainment-focussed VC fund with focus on South Indian and Hollywood movies, will be formally launching its USD 50-million fund by September.
Being promoted by three South Indians and an American, the Rs 300-crore fund will be based in Singapore and registered in Mauritius, thus does not need Sebi approval, one of the founders Venkat Devrajan told PTI here today.
He also said the entire fund will be mopped from high networth NRIs, primarily from the Gulf region, and the minimum commitment should be USD 1 million.
Asked about the return to investors, he said they are promised 18-20 per cent, which he hopes could be easily achieved.

This is the second movie-focused fund and comes on the heels of the country's only film-focused fund Third Eye Cinema Fund, promoted by ex-Pfizer India head Keval Handa and six other partners, and was scheduled for launch in April with a corpus of Rs 200 crore.
Devrajan said they already have soft commitment worth USD 15 million and the first fund closure will be done by September as the promoters have already put in the seed capital and completed these three projects.

The other promoters on board of the fund are Hollywood producers Naveen Chathappuram (who hails from Kerala), Charles Leslie from Chicago and Tamil actor/producer PAR Subramaniam, whose family has produced around 500 flicks so far. Devrajan, who has been the CFO of Reliance AdLabs and held a senior position in Balaji Telefilms, also hails from Kerala.

Leslie said 75 per cent of the fund will be spent on Hollywood productions and the rest on Malayalam and Tamil movies and other media content like TV and new media including mobile content.
When asked why skipping Bollywood and focusing, Southern filmdom, Leslie said South Indian films offer higher rates of returns.
The fund has already done two projects and six more are under work. They plan to finish 18 projects in the first year of operations, Leslie said.
The completed projects include TV serial Brown Nation; the movie 'Night of the Living Dead', which marks the entry of Tamil actor Madhavan into Hollywood; and a Malayalam movie (Chasing Moksha), featuring actor Fahadh Fazil, son of popular director Fazil, Devarajan said, adding they have just tied up with Tamil director Venkat Prabhu.

On the ticket size of the projects, they said it will be up to USD 2 million while they are also open to a big-ticket project, which will be co-investment.