Balaji Telefilms of Indian content queen Ektaa R Kapoor, who is in solid financial health, has revealed a strong emerging slate.
On the film front, Balaji has recently boarded director Nanda Kishore’s Malayalam and Telugu language magnum opus “Vrushabha”, starring Mohanlal, and also in the works are Hansal Mehta’s “The Buckingham Murders”, starring Kareena Kapoor, Rajesh Krishnan’s “The Crew,” starring Kapoor, Tabu and Kriti Sanon and Karan Boolani’s “Thank You for Coming,” starring Bhumi Pednekar. Sequels to Dibakar Banerjee’s groundbreaking “LSD: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha” and Raaj Shaandilyaa’s “Dream Girl” starring Ayushmann Khurrana and Ananya Pandey are also in the works.
In terms of television and streaming, the details of the shows will eventually be released by the respective platforms, but broadly they include an unnamed history for a leading broadcast channel, a pre-medieval show for a global streamer, a show based on a true murder in the TV industry for a leading streamer, a love story for Sony and three more shows.
“My personal ability to create content on television is [for] B&C centers. On films, of course, the paying audience – that is, the urban masses. And now the shows that I do, automatically when someone approaches me, whether it’s an international app or an Indian app, they look at me probably help them transcend to the smallest center women,” Kapoor told Variety.
“People expect me, as a production house, to serve the wider audience. And I think I’m much more comfortable there,” Kapoor said.
Founded by Kapoor and her parents Jeetendra Kapoor and Shobha Kapoor in 1994, Balaji is the largest producer of television content in South Asia. The company made a huge impression with mother-in-law, daughter-in-law soap opera “Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi”, which aired 1,833 episodes on Star Plus between 2000-2008 and was one of many in the genre produced by Kapoor.
“Obviously when I did ‘Kyunki’ and all the soap operas I was constantly told that it’s regressive content that pigeonholes women, but no one realized it was the only show where women led the story, and it was their story. And it was 80% women were housewives and caretakers. So the story revolved around what was probably the most relatable issue for women at the time,” Kapoor said.
Despite her finance team’s warning that it would be a lossmaker, Kapoor went ahead and greenlit “The Dirty Picture” (2011), starring Vidya Balan, about an actor who doesn’t act like a victim , but as a survivor who takes it upon himself. the male-dominated industry by navigating its sexuality.
“For me, that’s a great story to tell. Probably nobody saw it then. But that became one of our biggest hits ever,” Kapoor said. It was a similar story with the female buddy comedy ‘Veere Di Wedding’ (2018), starring Kareena Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor, which invested more than five times.
“Women make up 50% of the population. You also know that this is a disadvantaged population. You also know that this is a population that people actually underestimate because they have their own taste and choice. It’s just a huge opportunity waiting on the business side. On the personal side, you also know that these are stories we want to tell and they are stories that resonate. They are stories that, as a woman in the content making business, will be relevant and important. That’s why, on a personal and professional level, I’m chasing these stories.”
Balaji recorded a financial increase of 76% over last year, with revenues of $71.6 million for fiscal year 2022-23. In the first quarter of 2023, Balaji posted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $1.4 million, up from a loss of $3.8 million in the prior quarter.
The loss prompted a complete restructuring of the company with its three verticals – film, TV and streaming – treated as separate companies and their interdependencies removed.
“Treating the three different companies as three different profit centers really allowed us to see where the gaps were, where the optimization was less, where there was too much fat and too much waste, as far as capital goes. All the restructurings of the past year have ultimately resulted in this report. I don’t know if I’m talking too soon, but I think we will see exponential growth next year as well.”
Kapoor aims for a growth rate of at least 20% to 30% in all three industries per year.
Earlier this year, Kapoor and her mother Shobha decided to step back from the management of Balaji’s streaming company ALTBalaji, known for its mass-oriented bold topics with social impact such as sexual orientation and gender.
“Obviously ALT had to create content for mass India, and some of it didn’t quite suit us and our sensibilities. And the best thing to do then was to resign from the board [..] still owning the company and letting the creative teams that run this department do their job. It was a strategic decision and a personal one,” Kapoor said.
“We’ve got a three-year plan out on how to build the OTT platform separately, our content strategy on digital separately, our movies, which we have about four more IPS that we’re making that are extremely new and interesting,” Kapoor said. . . “And on television, of course, it’s a regular, entertaining masala that we put out year after year, we don’t play too much because it’s the medium that people want to be comfortable watching – they want it to be regular. And as most comfort foods and comfort entertainment are, it gives you a certain amount of melancholy, a certain amount of feeling that the world is the same.