BIGFlix Movie Rentals, part of Reliance BIG Entertainment, is planning a retail expansion via the franchise route. The company plans to target tier II cities such as Jaipur, Vadodara, Surat, Lucknow, Nashik, Jamshedpur, Kochi, Patna, Nagpur and Kanpur, among others.
Puneet Sachdeva, chief lead, Franchise Operations, BIGFlix.com, said, “We are geared up with the launch of our new expansion plans with the franchise route. While we will focus on the brand-building and content-acquisition aspects, our franchisees will handle all logistics and operations of the business. Considering that 75-80 per cent of our registrations come from the offline route and we receive tremendous response in terms of enquiries/registrations on our website from these cities for our movie service, we are confident the franchise model will be the most feasible path at this stage.”
Sachdeva said BIGFlix currently had a customer base of 80,000 and the company aimed to reach the target of 1,50,000 customers by March 2011.
BIGFlix will have two franchise models – store franchise and master franchise. In store franchise, the interested party can become the franchise of a single store in any specific city, while in master franchise, the interested party can opt for the franchise of a set of stores for a specific geographic location.
Pankaj Chandra, chief lead, Online Movie Rentals, said, “With the franchise route, we aim to focus on the core aspects of our business and reach out to as many people as possible. We have done intensive research on the movie-watching habits of the people in these cities and have fine-tuned basic requirements, such as content and pricing, so as to cater to their requirements.”
BIGFlix currently has 10 franchise stores in cities like Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Chandigarh, Faridabad and Panipat and plans to reach the 150-store-mark by March 2011.
– IndiaRetailing Bureau
