Indian movie rental service Seventymm has raised Rs 50 crore in a new round of funding from NEA-Indo US Ventures, according to the Hindu BusinessLine.
A Netflix copycat, Seventymm offers DVD rentals in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi and Chandigarh.
The latest round of funding will go toward expanding the service to more cities. The goal is to have a presence in 40 cities in two years, with Pune and Ahmedabad (on the west) and Kolkata (on the east) high on the company’s expansion list.
Seventymm says it offers 18,000 titles in 12 languages and 25 categories.
Subscribers can order movies online, over the phone or through SMS.
Seventymm is said to have 70,000 subscribers and claims to be adding 7,000 members a month.
The fledgling hopes to reach four million subscribers in five years.
We have not used Seventymm since we are not based in India. We have been renting from Netflix for three years and do not have any serious complaints (of course being desis, we always whine 🙂 ). Besides Hollywood and foreign movies, Netflix also has a huge collection of Bollywood films and a fairly decent collection of Tamil movies.
Netflix has done a remarkable job in the U.S. because of its decent service and low piracy here.
In India, with piracy being so rampant and so-so customer service in general we remain skeptical that Seventymm or any of the other Netflix clones can achieve the kind of success that Netflix has in the U.S. Some 10-12 years ago (in the pre-Netflix days), Blockbuster stores (brick-and-mortar movie rental centers in the U.S.) used to be so crowded with multiple lines. The other day when we went to Blockbuster to rent Bruce Almighty before watching God Tussi Great Ho, the store was deserted.
We doubt that companies like Seventymm will have a similar impact on brick-and-mortar DVD rental stores in India as Netflix has had on Blockbuster in the U.S.
Indian Movie Rental Service Raises Rs 50cr added by SearchIndia.com on
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old article.. anyway. I don’t think seventymm will have much success , in part due to the way they do business. I had a month subscription to check their services. the starting of the month was great, good delivery and take back. When the month came to an end, there was no person to collect the DVDs. Then a guy came after a month to collect the Dvds and the months rent. I said no way am I renewing the membership. If they would have collected promptly maybe I would have renewed.
Now theres one bigflix.com, looks good. they’ve got some tv shows and music videos for free, the movies need to be paid and downloaded. Saw a store named Big flix.. maybe a rental service. will try out someday.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. In India, you likely have far too many brick and mortar DVD rental outfits in the cities.
That’s one reason why the online DVD rental services may not work well in India. In the U.S., there are few brick and mortar DVD rental centers. Blockbuster and RedBox (with its limited collection) are exceptions. We hardly see the independent, mom-and-pop DVD rental stores now.
2. We’ve been using Netflix here for several years now and for the most part the service works well.