MUMBAI,July 11 (Xinhua) -- Valuable group, a privately held media house of India, has acquired Hollywood-based media company MovieBeam, the first acquisition of a Hollywood media company by an Indian firm, Valuable group said here on Friday.
MovieBeam specializes in video-on-demand services, telecasting movies using wireless technology into customers' homes through a set-top box.
MovieBeam was incubated in 2005 by an alliance of Disney, Inteland Cisco that had infused over 200 million U.S. dollars into it. After the acquisition, Valuable group says it could directly beam new movies to televisions sets on the day of the release (first-day, first-show in business parlance), for a fat fee. However, since the deal involved privately held entities, financial details were not disclosed.
Valuable group is a technology-driven media company that operates several media and entertainment initiatives. It also runs UFO Moviez, the largest satellite-based digital cinema network in the world. Recently there were rumors that a large corporate house, having interests in businesses like finance, power, telecommunications and also expanding its media business rapidly, had approached Valuable group for acquisition. The proposal, however, was declined by Sanjay Gaikwad, the technocrat-turned-entrepreneur who heads Valuable group.
MovieBeam was started in 2005 by an alliance of global media major Disney, technology powerhouses Intel and Cisco, and some other private players. In 2006, Disney had spun off MovieBeam and 2007 Movie Gallery had acquired MovieBeam.
Post-acquisition, Valuable group plans to infuse about 100 million U.S. dollars into the company over the next two years.
