Bollywood’s Viral Videos

Bollywood is widely known as the world’s most prolific movie industry, with about 1,000 films produced every year. But its audience is also one of the most far-ranging: Indian films are watched in more than a hundred countries, their fan base drawn from the 25 million Indians working abroad as well as moviegoers from Southeast Asia to Africa for whom Shah Rukh Khan is as big a star as Brad Pitt.

But it can take weeks before a Bollywood hit reaches foreign markets, if it’s shown at all, and that gap between demand and supply is often filled by piracy. Industry insiders estimate that as much as 33% of Indian film companies’ revenues are lost to piracy each year, with many of the counterfeits going to foreign markets. Now, two major Bollywood studios aim to change that by making films directly available, via download, to the vast overseas market that contributes a fifth of the industry’s revenues.

While a handful of third-party sites already offer digital downloads of Bollywood films, Rajshri Group and Eros Entertainment hope to do it on a scale never attempted before, allowing fans around the world to watch thousands of films, TV shows, music videos and more — much of it for free. “What is surprising is that no one in India has done it sooner,” says Rajjat A. Barjatya, managing director of Rajshri Media, Rajshri Group’s digital-media and entertainment arm. “This model hasn’t worked for Hollywood because they are extremely protective of their content and their domestic market is huge. But for India, this is the future.” In November 2006, Rajshri released the romantic drama Vivah on its website, Rajshri.com, the same day it hit theaters. Within a week of its premiere, the film had been viewed online more than a million times. The Web release would eventually bring in $4.5 million — nearly a quarter of the picture’s total earnings. “Vivah proved that producers are best off releasing their films simultaneously — this way you are essentially creating a new market that would earlier either not have watched your film, or would’ve watched a pirated CD,” says Barjatya. His company offers 375 films, 1,500 music videos and 60 TV serials on its website, in Hindi as well as Tamil and other Indian languages. Fans can choose to watch videos for free with advertisements interspersed, or pay to download ad-free films; prices range from 99 cents for a music video to $9.99 for the latest Bollywood release. Rajshri.com uses Microsoft’s Windows Media Digital Rights Management service to protect against copying, which Barjatya calls “nearly 100% foolproof.” The site streams some 90,000 gigabytes of content every month; after an April 1 relaunch, it will offer more than 1,000 films, as well as downloads for mobile phones. For advertisers, the new site will also offer the ability to target ads based on viewers’ demographics and content preferences.

Eros Entertainment, Bollywood’s biggest distributor, also puts hundreds of titles from its library of 1,300 movies and 5,000 music videos online; the company is planning to launch a new venture later this month offering similar ad-supported and pay-per-view options. Eros also brokered a deal late last year to upload trailers, movie clips and music videos to YouTube; so far, its clips have been viewed 15 million times. “This showed us that there was a sizeable segment that would lap up ad-supported free content,” says senior vice president Manu Kaushish.

Barjatya, who estimates that about 90% of Rajshri’s online videos are being watched overseas, says that someday “every Bollywood film will be released simultaneously in theaters and online.” Kaushish believes the technology has the potential to change the industry itself. “Digital distribution will lower barriers to entry for independent filmmakers,” he says. “They will be able to market their content without the expense of distribution to cinema halls.” Still, theaters will remain movies’ primary outlet for a while yet; less than 1% of Indians have access to the high-speed Internet connections that make downloads practical. Eventually, the technology could “mark a change in release strategy, maybe even in the way films are made,” according to Rajeev Masand, entertainment editor at news channel CNN-IBN. “But it will not happen overnight.” The studios are hoping the wait will be worth it.