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After relaunching his film company AB Corp last week, Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan is all set to enter yet another sphere of the booming $5 billion entertainment business.
If all goes well, he will get into the multiplex business. "We'll see how it goes and gradually move to other aspects of the entertainment business. It could be television, music, marketing, building multiplexes, who knows whatever," adds Bachchan.
His logic for the allied diversification is simple. "The Indian film industry is so uniquely placed that you have to get into all these activities. Even if we go out for shows, we perform our own film songs, we don't do anything fresh. So the film becomes a hub for all other activities," he says.
At the moment, film production remains his priority, but he claims that he is following the same business model as earlier.
But this time around, having burnt his fingers by launching a gamut of entertainment products in one go earlier, he is taking a step at a time.
AB Corp, launched in 1995 under the Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd (ABCL) banner, will access the capital markets in the last quarter of this fiscal. By then, he hopes to have three films on the floor, all as joint ventures.
Even as Bachchan is in talks with A V Birla group's entertainment arm Applause Entertainment, he says he would like to work with corporate houses.
"A sense of security can come from anybody. If at all yes, we like corporates like the Birlas and Tatas who have a history of credibility and management and we would like to hold hands with them. At the same time, we don't know if they are proficient enough in production. So we will pick up those people we feel are important to us and are capable enough to handle a certain section of our business," he says.