First 25 years was just like the first season of a TV serial; here’s what to expect from PVR now: Ajay Bijli

"Rather than selling goods and services, we are selling movies. So yes, we will grow in leaps and bounds with the grace of God and make sure that the number is not stuck at Rs 850 today as it is, at Rs 900 by the end of the year and after the merger Rs 1,500, but much more than that."

"I take a look at the stock price maybe once every 10 days or, 15 days," says Ajay Bijli, CMD, PVR.


I am going to draw an analogy. You have been in the movie business for 25 years. If your journey is a movie, where are you in the movie?
Maybe it is not movie, maybe it is a TV show?

Season after season….
Maybe one season just got over.

So one season is over?
One season is over. One can say that 25 years is a decent amount of time for a brand to be around. So many exciting things can still happen from here on. India continues to remain very underscreened. There is huge potential to grow screens in every nook and cranny. Tier II cities, tier III cities do not have a great cinema experience and PVR is going there as well.

That is why also the merger with Inox?
Well even without the merger we are in lots of cities already. But the merger will augment our presence even further in various cities and states. But just to come back to your previous question where do we go from here, there is no saturation either in the appetite for people to go and out and watch movies or for the country to have organised retail and this is nothing but a part of the organised retail format.

Rather than selling goods and services, we are selling movies. So yes, we will grow in leaps and bounds with the grace of God and make sure that the number is not stuck at Rs 850 today as it is, at Rs 900 by the end of the year and after the merger Rs 1,500, but much more than that.

By when is the merger expected to be complete?
We just got our BSE and NSE approval and it has to go through the process of NCLT and all. Let us say another four-five months, six months maybe.

Okay so in four-five months it will be be closed?
Yes we have to just await the approval.

What is the plan post the merger?
Post the merger the company will be called PVR Inox Limited and the current PVR cinemas will remain PVR. The current Inox cinemas will remain Inox. But any new properties that we open will be called PVR Inox and it will be a larger company. We needed to do this because the pandemic created a big dent on our balance sheets.

You have bounced back so strongly since Covid. If you look at the last quarterly results, you have beaten where you were pre-Covid going by revenues, profits and EBITDA.
Yes. Well God has been kind. If you see my interviews even during the pandemic, you will notice that I did not put my chin down. I still had belief in the medical fraternity that they would find a solution to the pandemic. Of course, the whole world got devastated and it was not that anybody was expecting but I still believe that the medical fraternity will come out with a solution and control and it did.

Also I believed in the Indian market. I believed in the Indian consumer a lot because the number one form of entertainment is still movie going, going out of home and watching movies and the film fraternity is making about 1,500 films a year and it is not just Hindi films, it is also regional Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada and Tamil, Bengali. In fact, tomorrow, a Bengali movie is also getting released called Byomkesh. Also a Punjabi film. The diversity and quantity of content keeps us going.

And right now also it is interesting you are saying that because the Bollywood movies have not been doing that well at the box office the way they used to do.
It is only three months. I just think that everybody has got this habit. If Virat Kohli does not score a century in two innings, he is not a good player anymore. If three movies do not do well, Bollywood is not good any more.

So you do not buy this trend that is going around right now…
Not at all. It is a content…. Even pre-pandemic, content is what gets connected with the consumers. If some of the current content in the last three months have not connected, it is okay but Gangubai did well. Kashmir Files did well. The Hindi versions of RRR, the Hindi versions of KGF did very well. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 did very well. Laal Singh Chaddha and Raksha Bandhan advances are fabulous. It is too early to renounce…

Okay too early to renounce…
Only three months.

Yes but is it too early to call a trend about the admiration for the movies of the south?
No. South movies were doing well even earlier. Baahubali did better than both RRR and KGF2. Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth all these actors have been doing very well for the longest time. So it is just that post pandemic, suddenly there was this appetite for people to go out and watch something larger than life. They were in captivity in their homes and were captivated when they saw a big spectacle and it did well. Those movies are very good as well. What connects and what does not connect with the consumer makes the movie do well or not do well.

So it is too early to call a trend and there is no trend when it comes to the admiration?
I mean I cannot even imagine they are calling it a trend. I cannot even imagine going there…

It is so far-fetched.
Too far-fetched.

You are celebrating your 25 years and it is a week after the stock hit an all-time high. How often do you check the stock price?
I am a massive fan of Sachin Tendulkar and so many others. How to look at the ball and make sure you do not get out and you keep hitting it, Maybe later, you can take a quick look and say oh! I have made a 50 or hit another century! I do not look at the scoreboard and then play cricket.

God is kind. I am running a listed company. I have got responsibilities to my shareholders. If I do a good job of getting the right revenues, satisfying the customer, basically taking care of my costs and my revenues, then the results will be good. If the results are good, then it will have a positive impact on the stock. I am focussing on how to make my customers happy, how to make a product which is acceptable to the people and then results will come.

As a promoter, how conscious are you of delivering shareholder return?
I have to be because shareholders are there, it is not fiefdom any more. Most of the shares are held widely, then there are some institutions which hold them and it is my responsibility to be the chairman and the managing director of the company to make sure that people are getting the returns. It is not a difficult formula. The formula is focus on your business, focus on the quality of your offering, focus on your customers. So that is all I am doing and doing one thing but doing it well hopefully.

You still have not told me how often you check?
I just told you that once in a while I will take a look.

What is once in a while?
Somebody will send me a message sir it is doing well, I will have a look…

Then you will check it out.
Maybe once every 10 days, 15 days we take a look at it.

nce in 10-15 days?
Yes.

You have a big release coming up – Brahmastra.
I am emotionally invested in that movie. I am heavily biased about that movie because my daughter has been working on this for six years now but Ayan of course is a prolific director. He did Wake Up Sid, Yeh Jawani Hai Dewani, and this is another level altogether. It is a movie that is meant for the big screen because they spent a lot of money on special effects and all that and this is a story which looks quite exciting.

It is a trilogy and we look for movies like this to fill up the big screens that is coming on 9th of September. We have got Avatar coming, we have got Mission Impossible Part 1 of the two movies that is coming. Lots of films are coming in Hindi, English. Vikram Vedha, which is Hrithik and Saif’s movie is a remake of a South Indian film is coming. We have got a good line up of movies to look forward to.

Tell me which has been your favourite movie of late?
It is a tough question because sometimes you enjoy more than one. But I found Coda very good. It was a movie that won the Oscar but then it got shattered by that infamous slapgate, it was a movie that was made by Apple, a very very nice film. I saw it about four times.

I asked you earlier about your journey as a movie. You said it would be a TV series and only season one is over. What do we expect in the next two-three seasons?
Well as I said, India is still under screened and this is the only thing PVR is known for. So, PVR must have the trajectory of building more cinemas at more places where an enhanced movie going experience is not there at different price points. So it is a heterogeneous market, it is not as if that one size fits all. We have a Director's Cut where we charged Rs 1,500 with full recliners, full service at one end…

Then Rs 700 on weekdays.
Yes. Then we also have Rs 100 and Rs 200 offerings in cities like Nanded, Ujjain, Aurangabad, Latur and so many places like that. The idea is to come out with a multiplex experience and enhanced movie going experience at every price point. That is going to be our mainstay always even in season two and season three of PVR.

I also feel that the brand has got the equity to be known as a movie brand. It has the potential to distribute and to stretch this brand equity more into other verticals of the movie business. It has got F&B as a big component of our revenues. Something can be around F&B, we already have V Cafés coming out. As I mentioned early, we get 100 million people visiting our cinemas, they do something before and after. F&B itself has become a Rs 1,500 crore business now.So, it is a big business. There again we believe we can do more…

Do they contribute to your revenues and bottom line?
The number of people who visit us and the brand equity that we build is going to throw a lot of opportunities for us to create more verticals. So in season two and season three, the mainstay continues to remain the exhibition business but we can build an ecosystem of various things around movies, around the consumer that comes from 12 to 34. That could make the company a little more diversified into entertainment space, lifestyle space, food and beverage space than only being an exhibition company.

What is in the pipeline – about 100 new cinemas?
125 screens. They are under fitout in various stages of construction in Pune; about three in Bengaluru. In Pune, a big flagship one is coming up in Hinjewadi. Down south in Hyderabad, Trivandrum we are not there. We have a very big 12-screen complex coming up there with Lulu. A 12-screen complex is coming up in Lucknow in Lulu mall also. So it is about 125 odd screens.

What will be the mix that will be there in the tier two and tier three cities because you said that is a big focus area?
I think about 40% will be tier two-tier three and 60% will be big cities because even the big cities are growing. We are opening in Kankpura in Bengalore, that is another catchment area which is coming up. Hinjewadi is another catchment coming up in Pune. So even big cities are expanding, new retailers are coming. We are with a couple of projects with IKEA. New malls are coming, new formats are coming. PVR just gets involved in all that.

You said the F&B business is about Rs 1,500 crore now. So, how do you still react to criticism about the popcorn, candy and drinks here being too expensive?
Expense is a function of quality. When people feel that they are happy with what they are getting, then they do not complain but at the same time I have always maintained that we are not forcing anybody to buy food and beverages. I do not want to use the word, they say infrastructure around what we are selling. So you know earlier what used to happen is a single screen used to have one projection room, one sound system; never used to be air conditioned or auditoriums used to be air conditioned but toilets were never air conditioned.

That has happened in the very recent memory. I ran single screens from 1988 to 19990 – Priya. Suddenly multiplexes came and the capex went four to six times. In the same square footage of 20,000, six screens got incorporated, six projection systems, six sound systems, air conditioning everywhere, quality went to another level.

Also one needs to be in CBD areas, earlier you used to have cinemas which were owned by Mom & Pop or Pop and Son or Mom and Son or Mom and Daughter and therefore no notional value of the real estate used to be taken. Now you lease from the malls and so there is a rental cost. I do not blame the consumers for you know saying things the way you are saying that this is expensive, but…

Especially when inflation is there as well…
Yes, because the format has changed so in the very recent memory only the single screens were there. You do not get this kind of decibel level internationally because multiplexes have been around for a much longer period of time there. It is still a new phenomena and we are still in a transitionary phase where we still have 5,000 single screens and 3,000 new build screens.

The comparison is very stark but if you look at their infrastructure cost, opex and capex is nothing compared to the capex and opex of a multiplex. So that is the difference. But God is kind. The fact that 100 million people came to the cinemas, is testimony to the fact that if you are doing a very very bad job then they would not have come.

If we did not have the kind of F&B sales that we get, if we are doing something incorrect then again we would have not got these kind of sales. So, by and large, people are happy with the quality of the offering, the quality of experience and that is why we are where we are.

How do you see the movie experience evolving going ahead?
It needs to be highly experiential. There can be different channels of movie watching which can be Netflix, Amazon, Sony, Disney – watching a movie sitting at home. I also watch as does everybody because we are not just doing one thing, we do multiple things. But once you get out of your house, you park the car, you make a plan with your friends or your family and decide which show, which auditorium, they need a massive reason to go out and watch the movie on the big screen. Therefore we need to make it very experiential.

But it is not a cheap experience? It sets you back a couple of...
Yes, it depends on what you are comparing it with. It is very affordable out of home entertainment compared to other out of home entertainments. What I am saying should we need to do this? We cannot compromise on the experience, we cannot compromise on the sound of the audio system – whether it is Dolby, Atmos or whatever. You need to have a laser projection system, big screens, very clean, neat cinema and people from hospitality. Most of our staff are from hospitality who understand how to treat the customer.

All these things have to bring a smile to your face because I cannot control what is happening on the screen, the content. Some people may like the movie, some people may not like it. That is a subjective issue. I can only control the experience and so I think more and more we push the envelope on experience so this is P(XL), IMAX is an experience, 3D is an experience, 4DX is an experience. We have play houses which is an experience, Gold Class is an experience, Lux is an experience, Director’s Cut is an experience, F&B that we offer in sushi and all that sort of stuff is experience.

If we keep pushing the envelope of experiential movie watching and movie going, then we will keep on differentiating ourselves from other forms of watching movies and people will keep coming out.

Are you a perfectionist, do you jave surprise checks at any of the cinemas?
I am guilty of not doing that much. My brother is very good at it and now my son is getting very good at it. My son will enter from the back. I am guilty of not making that many trips. I keep going to my favourite cinemas, a lot which are convenient but I should be doing that more.

Is it always up to the launch when you make these surprise visits?
I am the most restless person watching a movie because I always think something is not right. So I am a very bad customer for my own cinemas. I always take the corner seat.

Outside of Covid which is obviously your darkest hour, what was the second toughest moment that you had to tackle?
Covid was not my darkest hour, personally speaking, because my family was with me, I was counting my blessings because I had realised that you cannot take a one dimensional view of life. If your business goes down, obviously it hit me like a body blow when everything came down, revenues were zero. But I became very close to my children, I became very close to myself. I was quite happy with what came out of it and I am glad business has bounced back.

The darkest hour of course was my dad passing away when I was only 25 years old and that was a biggest body blow I have had so far. In 1992, I was 25 years old and I was still running the trucking company and I had just opened Priya two years ago. I had not even given one house full shows.

How did you guys get into the movie business?
Father had acquired this property in 1972. I took it over in 1988-89 after finishing college.