SVF’s Shrikant Mohta on partnership with Jio Studios: The importance of storytelling is taking centerstage during the digital disruption

Jio Studios, the media and content arm of Reliance Industries Ltd, and SVF Entertainment, the entertainment conglomerate of Eastern India, have joined hands to bring five big films to the Bengali market through a long-term partnership. This collaboration aims to produce a multitude of blockbuster films in the years to come, creating new opportunities for fresh talent and elevating Bengali language content to unprecedented heights. 

The first film from this joint partnership is Bogla Mama. Directed by Dhrubo Banerjee, the film will release in August this year. Riddhi Sen and Ditipriya Roy will pair up for the first time in this comedy. Srijit Mukherji’s cop universe Dawshom Awbotaar will release in Puja. Prosenjit Chatterjee, Subhashree Ganguly, Anirban Bhattacharya, and Jisshu U Sengupta will play the lead characters in the film. Mithun Chakraborty will be seen as the iconic Tagore’s character Kabuliowala in Suman Ghosh’s film. This is set to release in December. 

Theatre worker Arna Mukhopadhyay is set to foray into film direction with an adaptation of his play Athhoi. Anirban will work as the creative director of the film. The film is expected to release in January 2024. On the other hand, Raj Chakrabarty will come up with a yet-untitled film next year.    

This partnership is not only focused on producing an exciting repertoire of films but also on creating high-quality content that will focus on wider distribution, spreading their impact and influence across the world. With a line-up of over a hundred titles announced recently, Jio Studios aims to release an array of stories in various genres, including original web series and films, across multiple regional languages such as Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Bhojpuri. The partnership between Jio Studios and SVF Entertainment is poised to create the ideal platform to produce creative content that resonates with the Bengali audience. 

Mahendra Soni, director, and co-founder of SVF Entertainment expressed, “The alliance has marked significant progress in 2023. This distinct partnership will broaden the horizon of creativity and contribute to the overall development of the industry. With a shared commitment to excellence, this partnership is set to elevate Bengali language content to unprecedented heights, taking the region's film and entertainment industry to the next level.” 

Expressing his thoughts on the collaboration with Jio Studios and the upcoming films, Shrikant Mohta, co-founder of SVF Entertainment, said, “The film line-up would feature highly skilled artists from Bengal. The announcement of their releases in partnership with Jio Studios was an exciting and momentous phase in Indian entertainment. Furthermore, the importance of storytelling taking center stage during the current era of explosive digital disruption, making this partnership even more meaningful.” 

Expressing her delight in the association, Jyoti Deshpande, president of RIL Media & Content Business added, “The partnership between SVF Entertainment and Jio Studios is a powerful collaboration that seeks to create local language stories and take them mainstream. This vision is to contribute to the growth of the entire entertainment value chain, from production to distribution and everything in between. The SVF Jio Studios strategy is game-changing in that it will unlock value from incredible stories and intellectual properties that the two companies have banked in the past, present, and future.”