Adlabs founder bets big on theme parks

MUMBAI: Media and entertainment industry veteran Manmohan Shetty’s Rs 1,600-crore theme park project is finally ready to be rolled out early next year as he looks to tap into the growing spends on outdoor entertainment among urban Indians.
Shetty, a serial entrepreneur who sold his Adlabs Films to the Reliance ADA Group, is planning to hit the capital markets by 2014 to help it expand the business to other states.
One of the first entrepreneurs in the media space to have lucratively cashed out, Shetty is also in talks with marquee private equity investors to raise capital for his latest venture.
“We are open to diluting equity if we get an appropriate partner and valuation,” he said in an interaction with TOI. He said other areas of interest for him will be the adventure sports business which is gaining traction among youngsters in Asia’s third largest economy.
Credited with the first wave of corporatization in the film production and exhibition industry, Shetty’s move comes at a time when biggies like Walt Disney and Universal Studios have not been able to enter India in the growing location-based entertainment space, largely due to unavailability of land in the big cities.
“It took a while to convince banks to lend to a project like this considering there is hardly any category exposure here,” Shetty said. The debt equity ratio for the project is 1:2, he said.
There have been reports of the interest evinced by international players in this burgeoning sector, with the likes of the Anil Ambani’s Reliance ADA Group and Universal Studios having engaged in talks to build a theme park and resort in India although no official announcement has been made yet.
Spread across 300 acres, Adlabs Imagica is located between Mumbai and Pune on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and will house a water park, a hotel, retail and dining facilities within its premises. The primary revenue stream would include ticketing, food and beverage, and merchandising. “We expect 75% of the revenue by ticket sales while secondary revenues would include retail rentals, sponsorships, advertising, activations,” Shetty said. “If tomorrow a foreign player wants to come in to India, we are open for a tie-up with them,” he said. The Indian amusement park industry is pegged to be at Rs 7,000 crore growing annually at 15-20% per annum, according to estimates by E&Y or the industry body The Indian Association of Amusement Parks and Industries.