PST to set up 2000 digital movie theatres in 1550 towns by 2010

Kolkata, Dec 11 (UNI) Pyramid Saimira Theatre Limited, India's largest movie theatre chain, has chalked up an elaborate plan to set up 2000 digitally equipped cinema malls in 1550 cities and towns across the country by 2010 with an estimated investment of Rs 1,000 crore.

This was announced here today by PSTL Managing Director P S Swaminathan while referring to the company's decision to enter the capital market to raise Rs 84.44 crore through book building process for part financing the 'dream project'.

He said with the initial funds to be raised from the market till December 18 from today, PSTL had planned to set up a total of 350 movie theatre chain under the brand name of Pyramid in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan during the next three months.

It would consolidate its business in South India, particularly in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, where PSTL was already running 138 digital movie screens provinig more than 200,000 viewers to get the taste of thestate of the art technology in terms of movie viewing.

Referring to the huge demand for quality movie screens under comfortable ambience among the general public even in Tier II and Tier III towns, Mr Swaminathan said since most of the bigger cities already had a number of such facilities they had decided to concentrate on smaller towns where the latest Bollywood and Hollywood blockbusters would be shown almost at the same time they were being released in metros.

Elaborating his marketing strategies, the PSTL chief explained that in order to reduce their capital expenditure during the expansion programme they had recently tied up with a number of world renowned technological giants, including the Delta Electronics of Taiwan and Arasor Incorporator of the USA, for introduction of the next generation laser projection technology and the voice delivery over fibre optics network to ensure the best results in movie projections.

" Though we began our journey last year mainly as producers of Tamil and Telugu films, later on we decided to move on to only distribution of films and their projections in their movie mall chains across the country because of a better and more profitable business option, " he added.

Asked about their plans to make forays in the East and the Northeast, where the markets for regional Bengali, Oriya and Assamese films had been doing roaring business, Mr Swaminathan said they would prefer to look East only after consolidating their business in Southern and Northern India.

" But instead of making our presence felt in Kolkata, Guwahati, Patna and Bhubaneswar, we prefer to set up digital screens in smaller towns like Durgapur, Asansol, Siliguri, Dibrugarh, Ranchi, Jamshedpur and Cuttack within the next two years, " Mr Swaminathan said and hoped to bring about a revolutionary experience in movie watching by the general public even in smaller towns having limited infrastructural facilities available.

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