Shemaroo targets 5X growth in 5 years

Shemaroo Entertainment is eyeing five times growth in the next five years as it bets big on digital content, a top company official has said.

The company had posted a revenue of Rs 476.45 crore in FY18, with digital accounting for 25 per cent.

"Overall, the media and entertainment space is projected to grow to USD 20-21 billion by 2020. We think, as an organisation we are very well poised. We have kept a target for ourselves which is to grow five times in five years from where we are today," the city-based company's chief executive Hiren Gada told PTI here.

Shemaroo, which is in the process of launching its own streaming platform in the next six to nine months, said it had 20 million views on a daily basis across over 50 channels on YouTube and more than 600 million views on a monthly basis as of March 2018.

Gada said the traditional media business is growing "in low double digits" while digital has been growing at over 40 per cent for the company.

As digital media is growing faster, he expects digital revenue contribution to be more than half in the next five years, he said.

In 2017, there were 250 million digital video consumers. As per industry reports, it is projected to grow to 500 million by 2020 and 700-800 million during the next five years when the digital industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20-25 per cent.

The company which has launched devotional apps Bhakti and Ibaadat said there is a good potential for them in the next three to five years, with over 2,500 hours of multi-faith content.

The company has over 3,500 titles across Hindi films, regional titles, and special interest or non-film category and Gada said, "In the last four years we were in an aggressive library building phase in preparation for the digital growth wave. We have reached a good scale and size and we will move to the next phase of monetisation."
On its upcoming streaming platform that would be an entertainment heavy offering, he said, "there are a lot of segmented opportunities and there are a lot of gaps in the current offering which we have identified."