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On the last episode of Shark Tank India, the judges were in for a rather quirky pitch from two Telugu filmmakers. Hyderabad-based director Raj Madiraju and producer Umamaheshwar Ch brought to the tank their upcoming film $Krishnrama which is the sequel to their 2023 film Krishnarama. The filmmakers sought an investment of Rs 2 crore for 30 per cent equity. While the filmmakers pointed out the importance of small-budget movies today, Anupam Mittal jumped in and highlighted a fundamental flaw in the pitch.
Aman Gupta was amazed to learn that the makers made the film in just Rs 2.62 crore and made a profit of Rs 28 lakh already before release. When Azhar Iqubal asked for figures rather than viewership statistics, the makers went on to draw parallels between their film Krishnarama’s digital release and sale of tickets. This is when Anupam said that multiplying viewership by ticket price is a “fundamentally flawed argument”. Anupam added, “When you are in theatres you get the window of a weekend which works through marketing, so you will have to spend more money on marketing than the money you spent on production to drive audiences and then hope that word of mouth will carry the film. So to assume how much the film will drive in the theatres is not possible.”
Continuing to further dissect the viability of the project, Vineeta Singh shared that she couldn’t understand why the filmmakers were on Shark Tank India. She even asked if they were not getting funding elsewhere when Anupam Mittal revisited a time when he funded a few projects for directors Raj and DK. He revealed losing a few crores when the initial projects didn’t work. Sharing the incident, Anupam said, “Nobody makes money in this business. I want to thank you because you’ll made me nostalgic. Today Raj and DK have become Bollywood’s biggest directors, they are amongst the top, and they had pitched me a film that was exactly this. They made the film in the US, and from there we went on to make another film as well. Raj and DK became the top Bollywood directors but I lost all the money. So I studied a lot in depth.”
Anupam even explained that a lot of film producers are in debt and said that he was not scammed, but Raj and DK were also naive and were just learning. After this, Aman Gupta asked Anupam how much money he lost and the Shaadi.com CEO revealed that it was a few crores.
Later, Namita Thapar and others pulled Anupam’s leg. Vineeta asked the filmmakers to take Anupam as the hero in the project and they all laughed out loud. In reaction, Anupam said, “I don’t do Bollywood or Tollywood, only Hollywood.”
Following this, all the ‘sharks’ refrained from making an offer and the filmmakers returned home empty-handed.
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