Hindi
Eros gross profit up 57 % at $63 million
MUMBAI: Eros International has posted a gross profit of $63 million for the year ended 31 March 2008, up 57 per cent from $39.9 million in the year ago period.
During the period, the company‘s turnover surged 70.2 per cent to stand at $113 million, up from $66.4 million.
Worldwide theatrical revenues grew by 146.9 per cent to $52.1 million from $21.1 million. From US operations, the company generated $79.8 million in the 12-month period.
Says Eros chairman and CEO Kishore Lulla, “The performance in the past financial year reflects the competitive advantage enjoyed by Eros, based on unrivalled content ownership and global distribution.”
Eighteen films were theatrically released in 2008, out of which 16 were released globally. “In 2007, five out of the top 10 box office successes were Eros releases with Om Shanti Om going on to become the highest all time grosser at the time of the release,” the company said in a statement.
Revenues from TV syndication were up 56.3 per cent to touch $33 million, from $21.1 million in FY‘07.
The company says that it has struck television syndication deals for new and catalogue films with Sony Entertainment Television, Inx Network, Viacom Network and Sahara Television and several other international networks.
The company has seen a growth of 16.9 per cent in revenues from new media to stand at $27.7 million ($23.7 million in FY‘07).
Subscription Video-On-Demand platform continued to grow not only on Comcast and Rogers but with new deals such as Cablevision, Valuable Technology, Mauritius Telecom, SingNet, RTM Malaysia and Aksh Optifibre. Digital distribution deals were concluded with Amazon and Walmart.
The company says that the Eros partner channel on Google‘s YouTube continued to gain eyeballs with 42 million hits to date – monetised through ad supported model.
Content library and distribution generated revenues of over $23 million.
The company says during the year, it has augmented its library by 1900 films with fresh acquisitions. It has invested $200 million across 60 projects, giving full visibility of release schedule to 2010. It has expanded its global distribution network nationally within India and in emerging markets such as Germany, Poland, Belgium and South East Asia.
Following the announcing of the co-production joint venture with Sony Pictures earlier in the year, the Company announced a distribution joint venture for South Asia with Lionsgate where the entire Lionsgate library and format rights of over 13000 titles and their forthcoming films will be exclusively exploited across all formats including dubbing subtitling and remaking the content.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
