KODAK VS GEVAERT: It’s open war!

By MSM Desai
An open war appears to be on between Kodak and Gevaert even as producers vie with each other on who will take out the highest number of prints. While the distributors of Kodak, SAH Enterprises, claim they are making up for lost ground, and consolidating its lead as the numero uno raw stock provider, Germany’s Agfa-Gevaert, GG Photo Ltd, claimed they were the leading suppliers of positive raw stock, ever since Gevaert introduced the polyster-based positive stock much before Kodak did.

The war surfaced when GG Photo Ltd reduced the price of its positive stock by 16 per cent when the government abolished the countervailing (excise) duty on positive prints to this effect. Kodak followed suit to be on par with Gevaert stock.

Though Hindi and Tamil filmmakers take out more prints than they ever used to in the past, the consumption of positive rolls has not increased on the all-India level. The figure, pegged at 20,000 ten years ago, remains much the same even now. This is because there has been a drastic fall in the number of films produced on the all-India level since then, especially in the last five years. 385 prints of Refugee were taken out before release, and 300 prints of Bichhoo, both of which prove that each producer’s print-consumption has gone up in recent times. The producers reckon that one effective way to tackle piracy is to increase the number of prints. Of the 20,000 rolls required per month by the Indian movie industry, as many as 15,000 are demanded by the Mumbai-based industry alone.

At a dinner party hosted in honour of distributors by Kodak India Limited on July 7, the new agents, SAH, claimed they had sold 14,000 rolls of positive stock within two months, a record. SAH Enterprises is a partnership concern run by Santosh Singh Jain, Avinash Adik and Nari Hira of the erstwhile Film Center.

SS Jain, who is also president of the Central Circuit Cine Association, said his company which took over the Kodak agency in May has been able to sell 14,000 rolls of positive stock within two months and was confident that his company would soon make Kodak the leading positive stock-seller. Jain’s claim cannot be taken lightly because he wields influence in the distribution sector, as the leading figure in the Film Distributors Council. Jain also has tremendous clout with the producers, with whom he has struck a deal, agreeing to reduce the selling of satellite rights from 5 years to one year.

The party was attended by the leading distributors Shyam Shroff, Balkrishna Shroff, NN Sippy, UA Thadani, Tolu Bajaj, Vinay Choksi, Devendra Shah, Indravadan Shah, Harish Bhatia, Ashok Hira and trade leaders like Pahlaj Nihalani, Shakti Samanta and Surinder Kapoor.

However, Sushil Gupta of GG Photo Limited, who has set up a factory for the conversion of Gevaert stock, claimed that his company has been the leading stock-seller all through, because 99 per cent of the stock required by the industry is supplied by Gevaert. "All the top filmmakers have proved that Gevaert stock is qualitatively the best in the world. Rakesh Roshan tested three times before he took out prints of his film Kaho Na... Pyar Hai. Out of 385 prints taken out for Refugee, 205 are on Gevaert. Similarly, 215 prints out of 300 for Bichhoo are on Gevaert. We supply 100 per cent positive stock for forthcoming films like Kunwara and Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega. All the prints of Kya Kehna were on Gevaert stock. Almost all the hit films like Sarfarosh and Soldier were on Gevaert, too," he said. Gupta added, "While we have reduced the price of positive rolls which works out to Rs 2000 in Pondichery, Kodak has announced only 50 per cent benefits to producers in the case of its negative stock, on which customs duty was reduced from 16.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent. We have told the government that if they reduce the custom duty on positive stock, we will announce further benefits to the producers."

All said and done, while the war between Kodak and Gevaert hots up, there’s no mistaking who the real beneficiaries are: the producers, of course.