Long before digital streaming became the way of life it is today, there was another form of binge-watching known to Indians in the 1980s and 1990s. This version, which now seems primitive, entailed making a weekend run to the neighbourhood video library, spending ₹100 to rent out five video cassettes containing Hindi blockbusters,and feeding one cassette after another into a video cassette player—a marvel of technology at the time—hooked to a cathode-ray tube colour television set. Families would spend entire weekends huddled around the TV in their living rooms and bond over iconic Hindi films ranging all the way from Amitabh Bachchan’s Don to Anil Kapoor’s Beta. This was a time when choices were limited and life was simpler. Multiplexes hadn’t mushroomed yet and private cable television—with its multitude of general entertainment and movie channels—was at an embryonic stage.

Those who have lived through these times would remember a few brands whose logos used to occupy the top right corner of the television screen as these movies would play out. Brands like Ultra,Eagle, and Shemaroo can be recalled immediately. From anecdotal evidence, one could argue that most Hindi films worth their viewership were brought to Indians in home video format by one of these three brands.

With the passage of time and technology, video cassettes got replaced by VCDs, which were then edged out by DVDs, and later even DVDs became passé when viewership moved to digital platforms. The evolution of technology has made dinosaurs of many companies, and unsurprisingly, brands like Ultra and Eagle, once household names in the home video space, faded into oblivion.But Shemaroo Entertainment, which turns 57 this October, proved to be an exception. By continuously reinventing itself and evolving as a medium-agnostic content company, it has not only survived, but thrived.

Today, Shemaroo has an extensive digital presence, holds rights to some classic Hindi films (which it licenses to television channels and streaming apps), and provides content for in-flight entertainment. It has also recently jumped on to the streaming bandwagon with its own app.

And its market capitalisation has zoomed,because of which it is ranked 72 on Fortune India’s maiden Wealth Creators list. Since its listing on October 1, 2014, Shemaroo’s aver-age annual market value logged a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19%, and was at ₹1,226.1 crore on March 31,2019, according to data from Capitaline. The company had revenue of ₹478.7 crore in FY18, with a CAGR of 12.6%, according to data from Prowess and Capitaline. Net profit was ₹69.5 crore, with a five-year CAGR of 20.1%. The company reported earnings before interest,tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) of ₹144 crore, a CAGR of 19.63%That’s a long way for the company, founded as a book circulating library in 1962 by a 22-year-old from Kutch, Buddhichand Maroo, on South Mumbai’s Warden Road. The name was an acronym of his surname and that of Gangajibhai Shethias, with whom he collaborated to setup the library.

Around 1976, some of the library’s well-heeled patrons introduced Maroo to the concept of video cassette recorders and video cassettes of latest international blockbusters that were becoming popular in India. He sensed a business opportunity and in 1979 started a circulation library where he would take video cassettes from his well-travelled customers and rent them out to others. The video library business boomed and eventually Hindi movies started becoming available on home video as well.

In 1982, the market for video cassette recorders and colour televisions started growing in India as the government slashed import duties in the wake of the Asian Games, which the country hosted that year. “By 1983-84, the market for renting home videos had significantly multi-plied and renting videos to binge-watch over the weekend actually started back then,” says Hiren Gada, 48, Shemaroo’s chief executive officer and Maroo’s nephew.

Consequently, in 1987, Shemaroo decided that in addition to its video library business, it would also acquire rights to distribute films on video from film producers. Over the years, Shemaroo has acquired over 3,700 titles, including perpetual rights to some iconic Hindi films like Don, Amar Akbar Anthony, Kaalia, Namak Halaal, Mughal-E-Azam, Devdas (the 1955 version, directed by Bimal Roy and featuring Dilip Kumar), Anari, and others. Additionally, it has also built a robust library of devotional content,and entertainment and film content in other Indian languages such as Gujarati, Marathi, and Punjabi.After acquiring its initial cache of content that includes the likes of the classics mentioned earlier, Shemaroo has been mindful of not overspending on acquiring content in recent times. As a result, it doesn’t acquire rights to blockbusters that are fresh out of the theatres and focuses instead on buying rights to films in their second cycle of monetisation. This means that it buys these rights from an entity that has already purchased them from a film’s producer and aired them on another platform for a period of time.

DVD

Old is gold, if well sold