Educate, entertain or provoke. A film has to fulfil any one of these three criteria for Shravan Shroff, managing director, Shringar Cinemas Ltd, to deem it fit to distribute or exhibit. Shringar which started off in the early 1950s has distributed a number of successful films including Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, Lagaan, Bandit Queen and Life Is Beautiful. In the late 1990s, under Shroff’s leadership, the company ventured into exhibition and launched the Fame Adlabs multiplex at Versova in 2002. Subsequently they separated from Adlabs and have successfully opened a number of multiplexes under the banner Fame. Shroff strongly believes that exhibiting is the more difficult of the two ventures. “Distributors play the middleman between the producers and the exhibitors and so it’s easier. But with exhibition, it’s a whole different ball game. There are many more things to handle – the government, day-to-day selling of tickets and other things,” he maintains.

The move came at the right time when the lure of going to the cinema was fast dying out in favour of sitting back, relaxing and watching a movie in the comfort of your own home. But the advent of multiplexes changed all that. Bigger and better than single-screen theatres, they’ve changed the way we looked at cinema. “Man is essentially a social animal. People want to get out of the house and interact with others. Multiplexes provide a congenial atmosphere where they can enjoy themselves and leave their worries behind at least for a few hours. Whether it’s dates or family outings, it has had a major social impact,” he explains. But of course, the discerning audience also demands quality in return for the premium money they are paying. And Shroff finds that a great ambience, good customer servicing and ticketing quality are of paramount importance.

As movies of different genres go, multiplexes have created more demand for not just mainstream cinema but more offbeat movies as well. While movies like Shrek 3 and any big banner films like Karan Johar or Yash Chopra pull in the crowds automatically, he has to create interest when it comes to smaller labels. “As with anything, when the supply is short, the demand automatically goes up. Word-of-mouth publicity always works to get people interested. Initially you have very limited seats. If the movie is good, people will want to watch it and slowly you start opening up seats,” says he. Hyderabad Blues was one such difficult film to distribute initially. “That’s because at that point we had no marketing budget for the film and Nagesh Kukunoor was a non-entity.”

All things considered, the response has been tremendous. In these five years, Shringar has launched 11 multiplexes all over the country. But there’s a long way to go. From the government loosening controls so there is no running around to getting various permissions to having the flexibility to decide ticket prices and the use of IT to understand consumer patterns and what audience to target, Shroff believes a lot of work is still needed. “Another essential thing to do is to control piracy. And improve the infrastructure – it takes hours to go from one point to another. We need better roads and traffic control,” he insists.

At the moment, despite the loopholes, for him the going has been good. With another 11 multiplexes planned for the next year alone, which works out to almost one a month, Shringar Group is raring to go.