Global leader in BO Measurement, Rentrak to launch operations in India

By Bollywood Hungama News Network -

January 3, 2014 - 9:05 AM IST

This year has been one of the most significant years in Bollywood with multiple films crossing the 100 crore mark and the superstars moving into 200 crore clubs. In today's day and age when the definition of a film's success has shifted from the count of the number of days it runs in Cinemas, to the number of crores it has collected, it has become a daunting task to rank a film as being a hit, without a robust box office tracking mechanism.

Thanks to this shift in mode of evaluation, more often than not, we see different figures denoting a particular film's box-office collections floating around in the media. Across Movie Industries in India, As far as reporting of the box-office figures is concerned, the numbers vary from website to website and from magazine to magazine unlike in Hollywood. Of course some filmmakers inflate the revenues generated, in turn projecting their film to be a hit, while still others prefer to call a spade a spade. In fact some producers even come out with ads highlighting gross figures, instead of nett numbers, adding to the confusion.

Conflicting and confusing box-office figures are sometimes fueled by the respective stakeholders' eagerness to stake a claim to fame, as the top grossing film, at that time. Such claims, inherently not provable, have a negative effect on the overall market evaluation and cause a lot of skepticism about the Indian Movie Industry as a whole, and leading to trust deficit among its stakeholders.

Besides, until this point, the absence of a trusted box office measurement currency in the Indian Movie Industry has been severely impairing the prospects of maximizing the potential of this phenomenally powerful medium called Cinema and effectively monetizing new opportunities. As we know, besides Cricket, Movies are like a religion too in India. Apparently, India is the largest producer of films (over 1000 per annum) and largest consumer (over 3 Billion admissions annually) in the world. Despite this dream like popularity, Indian Movie Industry is missing certain ingredients that can catapult it, to its rightful position in the world and allow it to compete with Hollywood in size and scale. One such ingredient, as Movie Industry Stalwarts, Media Companies and Advertisers vouch for, is a standardized mechanism, and an agency with a proven record, reporting on the authentic box-office collections and put the Industry in perspective.

In this scenario, RENTRAK Corporation, the Global leader in Box Office measurement, with foot prints in over 38 countries, including USA, Canada, Mexico, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and China, and serving the most recognizable players in the industries, is setting up operations in India, to serve the Indian Movie Industry.

• Rentrak collects Box Office information from over 100,000 screens on a daily basis.

• Rentrak converts data into tangible information that creates knowledge that helps markets to move forward collectively and individually in a more efficient way.

• Rentrak brings value to the industries helping itÂ´s player to better understand the market place on a real time basis.

• 24/7, professionals throughout the world connect to Rentrak service to find information that helps them take key decisions.

Rentrak aims to provide Global Standard for Box office Reporting in India, as they do in the other markets they operate in, and consequently bring in global best practices in this space into India. In fact, publications like Wall Street journal and NY times have special columns to publish Rentrak box -office analytics. With more than 700 clients around the world, Rentrak is the global movie currency, integral for studios and content creators, to succeed in the industry. Currently, Rentrak's weekly coverage accounts for more than 80 percent of the worldwide box-office.

Today, Rentrak serves every major film studio, mini-major and prominent independent film distributor, exhibitors and multiplex chains in the worldwide industry. Rentrak's unique, proprietary systems collect and deliver box-office results and attendance information from more than 100,000 screens in more than 20,000 theaters across the globe, delivering crucial box-office grosses including weekend results and estimates in near real time. It delivers tremendous value to Producers, Distributors and Exhibitors alike.

For the record, In the US, Rentrak also measures, other devices such as Linear TV, VOD, Mobile, PC and DVD, being the only company that currently measures the life of a content, in all windows. Known for being an agency that features and logs confirmed and vetted box-office numbers, Rentrak is sorely needed within the Indian market.

Speaking on the development, Rajkumar Akella , Managing Director of Rentrak - India said, "India is a priority for Rentrak, as Indian movies are gaining importance globally with huge successes, and Hollywood Movies and World cinema are rapidly growing inside India. I would say this is the right time, and the right place for launching a service like Rentrak, Indian Movie Industry will surely benefit from Rentrak's cutting edge technologies and services, as much as Rentrak will be enriched by the Indian experience."

Global leader in BO Measurement, Rentrak to launch operations in India

Enabling streamlining data and providing immensely valuable analytics, while being unbiased and independent from any outside influence, Rentrak has an impeccable track record of over two decades.

And hopefully, the Indian film industry, just like its Western counterpart, would also have uniformity when it comes to sharing authentic box-office collections, thus helping the industry grow exponentially and scale new heights in time to come.