On Valentine’s Day this year, Vivek and Hitesha Chaturvedi, an entrepreneur couple in Gurgaon, went for a screening of Beauty and the Beast at a PVR close by. What was different, however, was that the screening wasn’t part of the ongoing films listed by the cinema chain on that day. It was a surprise hatched by Vivek — a Valentine’s Day gift for his wife who loves the fairytale. His plan was brought to fruition by the PVR Group’s recently launched theatre-on-demand service, Vkaao.
Movie menu
Vkaao is an online platform, made available through a website as well as mobile apps, which enables movie-lovers to watch a movie of their choice at a theatre in their city, at a time and date that’s convenient. There are only two caveats: the screening must be scheduled at least a week in advance, and movies can be chosen from a limited library of about 500 films, though PVR promises to expand the collection significantly in the coming year.
The films on offer range from Oscar-winning Hollywood films such as The Imitation Game, Zero Dark Thirty, Room, 12 Years a Slave to critically acclaimed movies such as Sicario, Amour, and Her . The library also includes mainstream hits such as American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street . Hindi films include Singham , Talaash , and Paa , along with classics like Kabhie Kabhie , Silsila , and Lamhe , as well as independent films such as Aankhon Dekhi and Masaan . PVR claims Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, and Gujarati cinema will be available on-demand as well.
Game-changer
Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have completely changed how we watch films and TV shows by letting us choose what, when, and how we consume content — even on the go. Similarly, Vkaoo promises to be a game-changer for those who love to watch films on the big screen.
The premise is simple. Anyone can schedule a show, and then invite friends and family to join it. All that is needed to make a screening happen is enough number of bookings to make the screening financially viable. This threshold number starts from as low as 30, and is based on theatre size, popularity, as well as the average occupancy numbers for the chosen day and time based on last two years’ data.
Karan Ahuja, head of Online Initiatives at PVR Pictures, says the idea was first discussed in mid-2015, while grappling with the problem of low-occupancy for certain shows, especially for the Monday to Thursday afternoon shows. “We wanted to tackle this by letting audiences watch something they want to,” says Ahuja. “There are a lot of niche movies and great content. But demand is patchy. It’s not always financially feasible to screen a film for an entire week.” Vkaoo aims to address this problem.
By late 2015, work on Vkaao had started. In addition to turning the movie-watching dynamic on its head — from being supply-driven to being demand-driven — Ahuja says the idea was also hinged on a certain nostalgia for films of yore, and to bring back people into theatres. The name itself is inspired by a refrain in a song from the Rishi Kapoor film, Hum Kisise Kum Naheen (1977) .
Ambitious plans
The concept, though new in India, is not entirely original. In Europe and in the U.S., Tugg offers a similar theatre-on-demand service. Ahuja insists, however, that Vkaao is a superior product, tailored to the Indian market. While Tugg focuses on independent films, Vkaao doesn’t restrict itself by genre or types of films in its wide-ranging library. Crucially, Vkaao has also built in an elaborate recommendation engine that personalises recommendations for each user based on multiple site-wide and personal parameters. Moreover, from a technological perspective, Vkaao is more convenient to use since it offers mobile apps in addition to its website.
The platform was launched late last month and is steadily growing — it helps that Vkaao is available across all of PVR’s 569 screens in 48 cities. The app has been downloaded 10,000 times and about 40 screenings have been completed successfully. On Valentine’s Day, about 15 screenings of romantic classics such as Dil To Pagal Hai, DDLJ, Veer-Zaara were scheduled across various cities. PVR, though, is setting its sights high and targeting 10,000 screenings by the end of the year.
Vkaao’s possibilities are already exciting those who have given it a shot. Ishan Garg, who created the first screening on Vkaao on February 8, in Delhi — an early screening of M. Night Shyamalan’s Split— managed to fulfil the minimum of 30 bookings within an hour. While there were a couple of early hiccups with the booking system, Garg shares that he attended the show with 29 of his friends, and is looking forward to more such screenings. Sumanth Venkatesan, a film reviewer in Bengaluru, joined a paid preview of Split with two of his friends. “It’s a massive initiative that rewards fans of cinema”, he says, though Venkatesan wishes the platform offered the option of selecting seats as well.
Of course, the platform can be taken to creative (and romantic) extremes too. The Chaturvedis had the entire theatre to themselves on Valentine’s Day as they watched Beauty and the Beast on the big screen. Vivek had gone the extra mile to purchase all the tickets required to ensure that the screening happened.
Revenue potential
The screenings have stirred interest in multiple quarters. Ahuja claims a number of companies are looking at scheduling sponsored shows — as a branding exercise. At the product level, partnerships with e-commerce, online ticketing, and payment partners are also in the works.
Moreover, given that Split was successfully screened to a house-full crowd a couple of weeks before its theatrical release, Ahuja says Vkaao might help distributors pre-release movies and simultaneously drive curiosity while gauging demand. This year’s Oscar-nominated films Lion and Moonlight are already available on Vkaao, and PVR is in talks with other distributors. Currently, paid previews are held a day or two before theatrical release; Vkaao promises to change this dramatically.
Promising future
The future appears promising. Ahuja muses that while Vkaao is already available across a large number of screens, more theatres, especially single-screens need to be brought into the fold. And then, of course, there is the challenge of bringing back old black-and-white classics. “Currently, the challenge is that the format of those films might not be suited to current projection systems, and will need to be converted. But it’s definitely on the cards,” he says. “The day is not far when you might be able to schedule your own screening of Casablanca on the big-screen .”