Money comes to the movies: Fresh bets on film and OTT firms are good news

Bhansali Productions will sell all its future film music exclusively to Saregama, giving it steady pipeline of premium music

In October 2024, filmmaker Karan Johar sold a 50 per cent stake in family-run Dharma Productions to Serum Institute of India’s CEO Adar Poonawalla for ₹1,000 crore. Around the same time, Baweja Production (Mrs, Chaar Sahibzaade) went public to raise ₹97 crore. 

In December 2025, Saregama announced it was forking out ₹325 crore for 28 per cent in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s firm. The filmmaker is known for Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Devdas, Bajirao Mastani, Gangubai Kathiawadi and Heeramandi among other titles. 

In January 2026,  Universal Music India, a division of the €11.8 billion Netherlands-based Universal Music Group decided to pick up a 30 per cent stake in Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar’s Excel Entertainment for ₹720 crore. That values the studio behind films like Gully Boy, Dil Chahta Hai and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and shows like Mirzapur at ₹2,400 crore. 

Early this month, Reliance Industries Ltd’s Jio Studios (Dhurandhar, Laapata Ladies etc) acquired a 50.1 per cent equity stake in Sikhya Entertainment (The Lunchbox, Masaan etc) for ₹150 crore. 

Add Abundantia Entertainment and Roy-Kapur Films, among the half-dozen production firms in the ₹100-500 crore revenue range that are in active talks to raise capital. Is this the harbinger of scale or the beginning of the end of India’s small, independent film/OTT production firms? 

“It is a very positive sign for the content creation industry,” said Siddarth Roy-Kapur, founder and managing director, Roy-Kapur Films. Mihir Shah, vice president, Media Partners Asia explained, “India’s movie studio business has been under pressure due to corrections in satellite and digital rights, uneven box office performance, and a prolonged dry spell in institutional funding.” 

The business of making films, TV, streaming shows and micro-dramas needs capital. And it is finally coming in. 

A historical search 

The Indian film business had a well-oiled studio system till Independence in 1947 but this began crumbling after the mid-1950s, paving the way for builders and businessmen with fat wallets to move into the business of financing films. 

Parallel cinema found its patron in institutions like the National Film Development Corporation or in people like Manmohan Shetty. The founder of Adlabs produced art films like Chakra (1981) and Ardh Satya (1983). In a particularly bad phase in the eighties, underworld money came into cinema. 

Much of this eased up once films got industry status in 2000. There was a rush of IPOs or initial public offers from Adlabs, Mukta etc. In 2008 came a deluge of money from foreign studios such as Fox, Eros and Disney. To be sure, achieving scale in the creative business is a long, slow grind anywhere in the world. That is true of India too. 

Dharma Productions, cited above, for example, was set up in 1976 by Karan Johar’s father Yash Johar. It had some hits like Dostana and Duplicate but never made it to the big league, until the son revived it with his directorial venture Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998). He’s gone on to become one of the most influential figures in Indian cinema, a model and a TV chat show host (Koffee with Karan), and Dharma has launched and nurtured talented young directors such as Shakun Batra, Nikkhil Advani and Ayaan Mukerji. Its repertoire of 45 films include hits such as Kapoor & Sons, Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham, Two States, Shershah and Raazi. In the financial year ending March 2022, Dharma was at ₹278 crore in revenue. The next financial year it was almost four times that at ₹1,044 crore before dropping to ₹520 crore FY 2024. 

This pattern is true of most of India’s one-man, one-woman production houses — Yashraj Films, T-Series and Excel Entertainment., for instance They do good work and make some of the most successful films and OTT shows. But without the financial support of a bigger company such as Jio Studios, the hit-and-miss nature of the business makes it impossible to hold steady — more so in a market that is transitioning. 

The revenue for the film business was ₹22,000 crore in CY25, streaming ₹45,250 crore the same year and television ₹70,000 crore in CY24. All three sectors continue to grow, with the number of people consuming filmed entertainment, music, shorts or shows anywhere between 523 million and 900 million in CY25, depending on the device, according to Comscore, a media data analytics firm, and the Broadcast Audience Research Council. 

However, consolidation has meant the number of buyers has gone down — PVR-Inox, JioStar, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video are now among the biggest buyers of content — which in turn puts pressure on costs and revenues. That is why scale is critical. It is a buffer against the vagaries of the business and also gives a firm some stamina while negotiating better terms from broadcasters, streaming platforms or theatre chains. Non-strategic investors like Poonawalla or Nepean Capital that invested in Dinesh Vijan’s Maddock Films (Chaava, Stree) in 2022 are good news. They bring in capital with creative freedom. 

The new colour of capital 

Over seventy per cent of all the music sold in India is from movies. T-Series, an Indian music firm, has the second largest channel on YouTube globally. The whole short video ecosystem operates on film songs and shots. “The strategic investments by music companies are more value-accretive than the ones like Poonawalla one in Dharma,” said Shah. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst, Informa TechTarget talks about the, “axis between music, film content, and YouTube.” 

There have been at least half-a-dozen attempts by music companies to integrate backward into film production. In the late eighties, T-Series made Laal Dupatta Mal Mal Ka; in the nineties Gramco (now Saregama) made Godmother. The idea was to keep all value creation from the film – both music and audio – within one entity. Both continue to fund films. T-Series gets over a third of its ₹3,173 crore revenue (FY 2024) from films. The remaining two-third of revenue comes from music. 

The Saregama-Bhansali and Universal-Excel deals are newer versions of the same idea. Universal will gain global distribution rights for all future original soundtracks created by Excel. The duo will launch a dedicated Excel music label to be globally distributed. “Together we hope to create a future sound for film music that will appeal to listeners in the home market, within the diaspora and, beyond that, in the mainstream Anglo (English-speaking) market,” said Devraj Sanyal, chairman and CEO, Universal Music India. 

Bhansali Productions will sell all its future film music exclusively to Saregama. 

This gives Saregama a steady pipeline of premium music while controlling acquisition costs. 

“Bhansali Productions and Excel Entertainment have built scalable franchises for the streaming era and maintain deep relationships with platforms such as Netflix and Prime Video positioning them well for a multi-screen content environment. Recent title tracks such as Varoon from Mirzapur and Sakal Ban, Chaudhavi Shab from Heeramandi have gained momentum across social media and music platforms, creating music that travels,” Shah said. 

The idea is to keep doing that at scale. But that comes with eventual loss of control. In the nineties, when India was liberalising, some of the world’s largest ad agency groups invested in creative hotshops such as Mohammed Khan’s Enterprise or Ravi Gupta’s Trikaya. These admen were legends in their time. However, their agencies have long been absorbed into big global marketing services groups such as Interpublic of Publicis. Ditto for say George Lucas’s Lucasfilm or Marvel Entertainment, which were sold to Disney. Many of these independent producers will grow with the investment coming in. But they will eventually become acquisition targets for bigger firms. 

That is the price of scale. 

The search for capital continues 

Baweja Productions (Jan ’24)

Deal: Raised ₹97 crore through an initial public offering 

Serene Productions (Adar Poonawalla) and Dharma Productions (Karan Johar) (Oct ’24)

Deal: Serene picked up a 50 per cent stake in Dharma for ₹1,000 crore. A bulk to be put into 'growth capital.' 

Saregama (Sanjiv Goenka) and (Sanjay Leela) Bhansali Productions (Dec ’25)

Deal: Saregama picks up 28 per cent (going up to 49.9 per cent by 2028, post dilution) in Bhansali Productions for ₹325 crore. It has the option to take this to 51 per cent by 2030 

Universal Music India (part of UMG, Netherlands) and (Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar’s) Excel Entertainment (Jan ’26)

Deal: Universal picks up 30 per cent in Excel for ₹720 crore. Excel valuation pegged at ₹2,400 crore 

Jio Studios and Sikhya Entertainment  (Feb ’26)

Deal: Jio picks up 50.1 per cent in Sikhya for an ‘aggregate cash consideration’ of ₹150 crore 

 

Waiting in the wings 

Abundantia Entertainment

Deal: Trying to raise ₹250 crore to fund its slate of streaming shows and films 

Roy-Kapur Films

Deal: Trying to raise about ₹400 crore to fund its slate 

Source: Media reports and companies