Mumbai: Balaji Telefilms earned a revenue of Rs 118.8 crore for Q1 FY23 of which ALTBalaji contributed Rs 36.8 crore through its direct subscription, which stood at Rs 6 crore in Q1 FY23, the company said in a statement.
The group's EBITDA loss is Rs 20.4 crore and the loss after tax is Rs 24.5 crore.
Balaji Telefilms Ltd managing director Shobha Kapoor said, “Our content has always resonated with audiences at large as it is deeply ingrained in India’s socio-cultural fabric and this quarter has been no different given that we have continued to provide content-driven and quality entertainment while simultaneously focusing on sustainable growth for our investors.”
“We continue to have strong controls on the cash spend while driving overall profitability including some strong strategic content sharing deals which allows us to further our growth,” she added.
OTT-business
ALTBalaji has 93+ shows live on its platform. 'Lock Upp' which was live streamed, gained enormous popularity and went on to become the most watched reality show in the OTT space, with 500+ million views. As a result, the company generated significant long-term IP because this format had never been seen in the Indian entertainment domain before. This quarter they released Apharan- Season two which garnered more than a million views within a short time.
For the three months ending 30 June, the company sold 3.1 lakh subscriptions (including 1.62 renewals). This excludes subscribers on partner apps where the content continues to do well.
The company, in its release, said, “ALTBalaji continues to produce content-driven shows and we are confident that it will be regarded as one of the leading Indian OTT players shortly as we have a strong content library catering to classes and masses alike with consistent hit shows across genres.”
The company continues its strategy to drive deeper audience engagement by creating quality and content-driven shows that are targeted at a mass audience seeking differentiated stories. Currently, the engagement time stands at 62+ mins, with watch time at 16.19 billion minutes. Video views stand at 1.37 billion cumulative to date.
Some of our shows continue to be highly rated and popular amongst our audiences, especially the youth, and also include our immensely popular niche reality competition show (that was released last quarter).
TV Business
In Q1 FY23, Balaji’s TV business continued at normal for three months with 246.5+ hours of production across 8 shows compared to 174.5 hours in Q1 FY22. Two more TV shows are lined up across genres for the next quarter. ‘Apnapan’ was launched in Q1 FY23 which generated a good audience response.
Kapoor said, "As always, we are confident that our content will strike a chord with audiences as our storytelling is backed by strong creative capabilities which drive our business growth.”
Movie business
In terms of movies, "Ek Villain Returns" starring John Abraham and Arjun Kapoor, was released on 29 July to positive reviews, earning 51 crore plus at the box office.
Kapoor said, “Considering that theatres are now operating at 100 percent capacity, we are confident that our movie business will be back on track given that we have six more movies up for release in FY23, out of which two films are ready to release stage, three films in post-production stage and one film under production. We have pre-locked exciting revenue deals on our movies slate, thereby de-risking our movie business segment."
