PVR and Paytm form strategic on-line movie ticketing relationship

PVR cinemas and Paytm announced a new strategic relationship today that will bring PVR’s movie tickets to Paytm’s e-commerce platform as a part of its nationwide foray in the on-line movie ticket segment. In the first year of this relationship, PVR targets to sell tickets worth Rs. 2.5-3 billion on Paytm’s e-commerce platforms besides selling tickets from the box offices and other channels.

Mr. Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, Joint Managing Director, PVR Ltd. said, “In our never-ending passion to provide convenience to our esteemed patrons, we have partnered with Paytm as our e-ticketing channel partner. Reaching over 500 screens brings further responsibilities to provide a seamless movie watching experience. With Paytm, we envision to touch millions of new movie goers who may now experience the joy of watching films at a PVR Cinema near them. This is another initiative to augment the box office revenues by reaching out to more consumers and achieving better penetration into micro markets. To sum up, this association is a sure delight not only for us but for our patrons, film distributors and producers alike!”

Paytm is aggressively extending its presence in new verticals as a part of its strategy to be ubiquitous in daily life of its customers. Considering the current size of movie ticketing market in India, worth USD 2 billion and growing 10% annually, the on-line movie ticketing market is only 15% of the total domestic market. Paytm has set aggressive targets for itself and intends to double the share of on-line movie ticketing market in quick time. With over 125 million registered users and 90 million orders per month, Paytm is the perfect e-commerce platform to reach out to the growing movie aficionados of the country.

Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & CEO, Paytm said, “Launch of movie tickets on Paytm is in line with our overall strategy of bringing more and more payment use cases online. Today online platforms penalise customers for paying in advance digitally as they are asked to pay a fees and surcharge. We will eradicate this practice and also enable customers to purchase popcorn and other confectionaries online thereby reducing queues as well.”

He added, “We plan to launch movies with upto 100% and other weekday special promotions to encourage users to try booking movies on the Paytm app. We have a collaborative approach with cinemas and other brands and aim to offer consumers incentives to drive the currently low online penetration from less than 15% to more than 50% in the next 3 years. We have budgeted Rs. 120 crore this year alone for this.”

Starting this month, PVR tickets and F&B products will be sold and marketed on Paytm portal’s web, mobile apps and other affiliate channels. The significant consumer shift over the past few years towards online and mobile sales, with a strong CRM backbone allows better segmentation and analysis in marketing relevant content to users. For PVR, this shift also helps in reducing the burden at the box office by reducing costs and making up for the lack of customer data thereby helping in predictive modeling.

Mr. Kamal Gianchandani, Chief of Strategy, PVR Ltd. added “We want to super serve moviegoers anytime and anyplace with engaging movie information, offers and other features, so it was natural for us to team up with Paytm, whose mobile wallet and e-commerce services are enjoyed by millions and is a great distribution platform for PVR’s movie tickets and F&B offerings. Paytm’s insights into moviegoer behavior will be a key piece of movie audience data that will be added to our growing data and targeting capabilities platform, as we look to better serve our audiences with timely, targeted and relevant content and messaging.”