Business Objective

• To consolidate ECDC's position as a total solutions provider in the motion picture exhibition industry.
  
  
• To create incremental box office revenue for the industry, increasing the productivity of a film by a growth in the number of day and date release centers, technology being the enabler.

Business Footprints

The initial focus was to digitize screens in the Bombay film territory (consisting of western Maharashtra, Gujarat and parts of Karnataka). But seeing the opportunities and growth in the present Indian movie supply-chain scenario, the company has now set up offices in Delhi, Nizam, CP, CI and Rajasthan.

Business Opportunities

Today, on average, the 600 multiplex screens contribute to almost 10-15% of the all language theatrical collections; however, the multiplex screens have gained greater importance as far as the Hindi film business is concerned. But, the remaining 12,000 – 13,000 single screens in the country are still influenced by the traditional ways of working and no investments have been made to disturb the inertia of minimum guarantees. Above all, the industry players failed to realize that if a change in the business model suits the multiplex well, the same would hold true for the single screens.

Sometime in 2005, digital projection technology revealed itself to the industry. Fortunately, the technology caught flavour with the single screens in India. The deployment of the digital technology gave a reason to shift from a theatre hire/MG regime to a revenue share regime even for the single screens.

E-City Digital’s focus is on cinema exhibition and digital technology is just an enabler. E-City Digital also has a competitive advantage and expertise in exhibition business. The company not only digitizes the single screens but also is responsible for programming them regardless of the business arrangement.

The company practices a hybrid business model:

1. Theatre Hire – E-City Digital will have long-term theatre hire contracts with the exhibitors, wherein the company will pay fixed weekly theatre hiring charges to the exhibitors. The tenure of the contract will be for a minimum period of 5 years, with the risk and reward to be borne by
E-City Digital.

2. Revenue Share – E-City Digital shall have a long-term revenue sharing understanding with the exhibitors. The net box-office revenue will be shared on pre-agreed terms. The tenure of the contract will be for a minimum period of 5 years, with the risk and reward proportionately shared with the exhibitor.

3. Service Commission – E-City Digital is also active in the business of retrofitting and refurbishing theatres with digital infrastructure for a service fee. The option of hire-purchase is also available, where E-City Digital will continue to work on a commission structure, with accountability towards operations and maintenance.

Business Technology

E-City Digital Cinemas provides secure, end-to-end transmission using proven encryption, decryption and projection technologies.

Step 1 – Post production - The movie is converted into digital master using DI (Digital Intermediate) data. DI is then directly encoded on the encoding server.

Step 2 – The encoding server compresses and encrypts the movie. During encryption, a key is applied to the movie and only an authorized person can access the movie, thereby preventing piracy.

Step 3 – After encryption and compression the movie is uplinked to the satellite via transmission server and downloaded at the play-out local server, installed at a local cinema and screened using a digital projector.