MUMBAI: Percept Limited has floated a global entertainment company, Percept Live, that will focus on creating intellectual properties in the three verticals of sport, entertainment and social media.

The media, entertainment and communications group plans to invest Rs 2 billion in this new venture that aims to tap live event audiences for these three verticals.

Percept has already raised Rs 500 million and has appointed Balaji Telefilms? ex-TV CEO Manuj Agarwal as the chief executive of Percept Live. Incidentally, it will be a homecoming for Agarwal who was working with Percept D?Mark prior to his move to Balaji.

Percept COO Ajay Upadhyay says, ?We have always been in the EMC - Entertainment, wedia and communications space. However in each of these areas, we had both a service business and an asset business. Along with the varying business focus of the service businesses and the asset businesses, they have completely different capital and resource needs. While the service segment is B2B, our asset business is B2C business. It is these imperative that have led us to restructure our business into two verticals - Marketing Communications Services and the Filmed, Live Entertainment and Digital Asset business.?

In 2010, Percept had announced the restructuring of the entertainment business, housed under Percept Entertainment, under three distinct verticals - Percept Sports and Entertainment, Percept Pictures and Percept IP.

Percept Joint MD Shailendra Singh, who is celebrating 25 years of being in Percept tomorrow, says: ?We want to scale up our existing IPs and cater to the diverse and evolving needs of clients and consumers. It is not easy to incubate things but an effort must be made."

Percept?s IPs include Sunburn, Fight Night, Bollywood Live and Fans Football Championship (in sports space). "Percept Live is looking to organise 30 events this year," says Upadhyay.

A big part of this is the expansion of one of its well known IP properties Sunburn, a music festival which the media conglomerate plans to launch in other cities. Delhi will come up in October.

Percept Live has global ambitions to take Sunburn to cities like Jakarta, Colombo, Dubai and Singapore. It is also looking at the possibility of hosting the event in Mexico.

According to Singh, the Goa edition of Sunburn has a turnover of Rs 4 billion. Next is a movie on the festival which will be released by Viacom18 in December. "We have also expanded Sunburn to include things like merchandise," he elaborates.

In the music space, ?Lost? is another IP property that the company is looking to build. For ?Lost?, Percept has partnered with Arjun Rampal. Music genres like rock, pop and reggae will be showcased.

Windsong, another festival, aims to showcase new talent. Four venues in four cities will be used and 20 new bands will be showcased. ?We want to create our own Rihanna and the Rolling Stones instead of just importing talent to entertain. The issue is to give new talent a platform and also to position them properly," Singh avers.

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Percept restructures entertainment biz, eyes Rs 10 bn

MUMBAI: Balaji Telefilms? chief executive officer of Television Manuj Agarwal has quit after spending close to two years in the organisation.

The board of directors has approved the resignation of Agarwal who was heading the television business of the group.

Prior to Balaji Telefilms, Agarwal was chief operating officer at Percept D?Mark, the experiential marketing arm of the Percept Group. Agarwal had replaced Nachiket Pantvaidya who quit Balaji in November 2009.