NV Capital, said to be India’s first media and entertainment credit fund, plans to organise virtual roadshows to tap investors across the UAE for raising AED246 million ($67 million) corpus. 

 

Given the active involvement of Indian diaspora investing across various equity and debt instruments in India, as well as exploring new alternative asset classes, NV Capital is looking forward to raising funds from high networth individuals (HNIs), NRI investors, family offices and financial institutions based out of UAE to participate in the growth story of this sunrise sector. 

 

The fund recently received a nod from SEBI as Category II Alternative Investment Fund. 

 

Founded by industry professionals and ex-bankers Nitin Menon and Vivek Menon, NV Capital will be also India’s first credit fund focused on the media and entertainment sector with the objective of investing in content creators, OTT platforms, gaming and entertainment start-ups. 

 

With the rapid rise of Category II credit funds in India over the last few years, NV Capital said it was looking to establish a new alternative asset class in the media and entertainment space. 

 

The key sponsor of NV Capital is Jayantilal Gada, the Chairman and Managing Director of Pen Studios, an industry veteran with over 35 years of experience in the media and entertainment industry.

 

Pen is a leading integrated studio with a prominent presence in Indian film production, distribution, movie aggregation, broadcasting, digital media, visual effects and animation.

 

On the plans, Vivek, the co-founder and managing partner, NV Capital, said: "It is a proud moment for us to launch India’s first media and entertainment credit fund which is on the cusp of exponential growth. Given the rise of UAE as a preferred destination for global FPIs, it is eminent for the country to become the gateway of new age sectoral funding to countries like India."

 

"At the same time, owing to cultural similarities, a large expat population of Indian origin and sustained tie-ups with Indian media and entertainment industry, UAE remains a key market for garnering funds for pour pioneering offering," he noted.

 

With close to 1,500 movies being released every year, combined with the rapid rise of multiple OTT monetisation platforms which showcased 180+ web series and 80+ direct to OTT films launches in Hindi language alone since last year, the value of content has been growing exponentially. 

 

"This trend highlights the scope and enormous opportunity in entertainment financing where content creators are in constant dearth of capital to scale up," he added.

 

Added to this, digital media and gaming are the other two subsegments that continue to grow expeditiously, with online gaming alone expected to grow at a CAGR in excess of 25%. 

 

Speaking on the opportunity, Nitin said: "The last 10-15 years has witnessed meteoric growth in this alternative asset class with the support of ancillary revenue monetization platforms like broadcasting, music amongst others, and now the recent OTT phenomenon."

 

The investment in programming by media houses in OTT more than doubled from $260 million in 2017 to $700 million in 2020, he stated. 

 

"Further, with the recent Amazon - MGM and the Warner - Discovery deal, the war for content manufacturing is getting bigger globally and India would be a recipient of these content spends as the next big market," he added.