Trisha Ghosh, Pune
Reliance Industries and The Walt Disney Corporation have officially announced a strategic joint venture to merge the digital streaming and television business of Viacom18 and Star India. This will create an entertainment giant in India that is highly likely to become a dominant player in the media industry and plans to deliver a huge range of diverse content to India and the Indian diaspora globally as well.
Viacom18 is a company that is part of the Reliance Industries (RIL) group, owned by Mukesh Ambani. It will be merged with Star India Private, which is owned by Disney. RIL has planned to invest Rs. 11,500 crore into this venture to finance the growth strategy that will be implemented afterwards.
Significantly, Nita Ambani, wife of Mukesh Ambani, has announced that she will be heading this venture as chairperson. Although Ambani had recently left the RIL board to focus on the company’s philanthropic work, she has returned for this deal. With a valuable amount of experience in the fields of arts, sports, entertainment and Bollywood, she is an ideal candidate to lead this new project, as per Shailesh Haribhakti, board chair at multiple Indian companies.
Reliance will control the joint venture. It has a stake of 16.34 percent, Disney has 36.84 percent and Viacom18 owns 46.82 percent. “We welcome Disney as a key partner of Reliance group”, said Mukesh Ambani. He has further elaborated that this strategic merger with the global entertainment giant Disney will allow RIL to benefit immensely from their synergy. The two organisations will merge their resources, creative abilities and market knowledge to deliver quality content at reasonable prices across the country.
Meanwhile, Disney’s chief executive Bob Iger has said that this merger will serve Indian consumers nationally and globally with a wide portfolio of digital, sports and entertainment content. “India is the world’s most populous market”, he said. He has expressed his pleasure for various opportunities that the venture will provide to create long term value for both companies.
RIL and Disney’s merger will create a conglomerate of various entertainment channels and assets. These include Colors, StarPlus, StarGOLD, Star Sports and Sports18. Digital platforms such as JioCinema and Hotstar will provide more than 750 million consumers across India access to popular and anticipated television and digital events. The joint venture will be given the right to distribute over 30,000 content assets (films and productions) from Disney in India.
Furthermore, this announcement has come weeks after the Sony Group Corp from Japan called off their agreement with their unit in India with Zee Entertainment Enterprises. The only major competitors in the market for RIL and Disney now are Sony and Zee. Uday Shankar, vice chairperson of the venture, has said that the merger is highly likely to change the future of entertainment in India. It will spearhead Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to transform India’s digital landscape.