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Subhash Ghai's Mukta Arts to go public mid-July

Noted film-maker Subhash Ghai's film production company, Mukta Arts Limited, today announced its plans to enter the capital market with a public issue of Rs 1 billion on July 10.

Of the Rs 1-billion issue, Rs 750 million will be raised through book building and the rest will be open to public from July 28, Ghai told reporters today.

HSBC, Enam, SMIFS and Triumph are the managers for the issue. Mukta Arts is amongst the first Indian film production and motion pictures companies to go public.

India is not only the largest film producing country in the world, but the quality of Indian cinema has begun to match international standards. Indian movie software exports have grown from $ 10 million a decade ago to $ 100 million last year and are expected to cross $ 250 million mark soon.

The industry, which produces 800 films a year with an average of Rs 600 million spent on each film, employs a workforce of 2.5 million.

Ghai said the total revenue generation of the film industry is expected to grow from Rs 62 billion in 1999 to Rs 339.84 billion by 2005 and export earnings from film software are expected to increase from Rs 6.65 billion to Rs 147 billion by 2005.

He said that his company had several ''firsts'' to its credit including insurance for the film Taal and use of audiocodec technology for music recording.

Giving details of his future plans, Ghai, whose latest film Yadein starring Jackie Shroff, Hritik Roshan and Kareena Kapoor goes on floor from July 15, informed that the company is expanding its existing studio facilities from the present 13,000 sq ft to 26,000 sq ft and adding a music recording studio, a mixing theatre and editing suites.

Mukta also intends to acquire theatrical, television, satellite, cable, overseas, musical, cd, dvd, internet rights of quality films of other production houses and consolidate its library. The company has already acquired television right of Lekh Tandon's Zameer and Karan Razdan's Detective.

Mukta will also venture into production of television serials and production and marketing of music albums. The company is in the process of setting up its own distribution centres and overseas offices in the US, the UK and the Middle-East to optimise its earnings.

UNI

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