Mumbai NCLT approves of PVR-Inox meeting of minds

One of the industries that was detrimentally affected by the catastrophe wreaked by the COVID pandemic was the movie exhibition business. In particular, for the 2 largest players PVR Ltd and INOX Leisure Ltd, FY21 saw them facing losses as high as 91% due to lockdowns. The emergence of OTT platforms and the intensity of competition offered only further added insult to the injury. This compelled their respective business heads, Ajay Bijli of PVR and Siddharth Jain of INOX to set competition aside and execute the marriage of the two companies.  

Finally, the PVR-INOX merger has been approved by the Mumbai Bench of National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on 12th January 2023.

PVR-INOX will now have virtual stronghold over the entire country with a combined total of 1,546 screens across India and Sri Lanka. The combined entity also has aggressive growth plans. This horizontal integration has produced substantially better cost and revenue synergies and operations on larger scale have also resulted in diminishing average costs through economies of scale. However, the principal challenge for the association will now be to come up with novel methods to combat the OTT headwinds. This is more so considering that post-pandemic attendance in theatres have been miniscule with regional movies doing better than Hindi movies. Most people resorting to subsequent film releases on OTT platforms.