Published on June 27, 2005

Local business has proved successful in coordinating Bollywood shoots here

Indian-Thai businessman Kulthep Narula trod a new path when he set up Benetone Films to coordinate Bollywood film shoots in Thailand.

The young entrepreneur wants to steer the Narula family business toward the film industry after it spent generations in Thailand with interests in real estate, hotels, textiles and jewellery.

Benetone Films started three years ago when well-known Indian actor-director Feroz Khan went to Bangkok for a one-week film shoot that was extended to 40 days.

“The Bt20-million film would have cost double if he had shot it in Australia, his original location,” Kulthep said.

The film’s producers were amazed by the locations in Thailand, the efficiency of the technical crew and the high quality of the labs.

The company’s most important production this year is a US$1.75-million (Bt72 million) film to be shot entirely on location in Bangkok. The film, to star Amitabh Bachchan, will have a 60-member Indian crew and a 50-member Thai unit.

There are also plans to shoot the second part of the video for Tata Young’s Bollywood hit “Dhoom” in the Kingdom.

Kuthep said Bollywood film shoots could last anything from a week to a month, with crews numbering 40 to 100 people. He said the budget could be anything from Bt5 million to Bt20 million.

An Indian film called “Murder” whipped up interest in Thai locations in 2003 because it was shot locally and was a huge hit. It starred Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat, who created a stir at the recent Cannes Film Festival.

Benetone Films has also coordinated commercials for Indian TV, which can cost between $1 million and $4 million for a three-day shoot. Kulthep’s great-grandfather went to Bangkok in 1880 as a trader.

“We were the first Indian family to register at the Indian Embassy,” he declared.

The family went into different industries such as jewellery, real estate, import-export, and distributed hugely popular Indian films in the 1960s and 1970s.

Then came the Hollywood boom, which swept out Indian films – and to a large extent local films – at Thai cinemas.

After attending the prestigious Scindia School in India, Kulthep went to New York to study for a degree in finance and economics. He originally planned to work in the United States, but then decided it might be better to transplant the American IT boom into Bangkok.

“We set up Bangkok’s first and biggest Internet cafe on Sukhumvit Road in 1996,” he said.

He also set up a Web development company and an information security firm.

But then came the economic crash in 1997.

Kulthep’s father, Rajpal Narula, began to focus his attention on the export of jewellery and woodcraft.

Then in 2002, his father had a chance meeting with Feroz Khan in Bombay, which led to the formation of Benetone Films.

“Our advantage is that we are Indians and we can understand both cultures,” Kulthep said.

The company is known by about 90 per cent of Bollywood and serves as a bridge between Thailand and India.

The family went along way to facilitating that bridge between cultures by accompanying the Tourism Authority of Thailand and the Thai Film Office on a trip to several Indian cities last year to promote Thai film locations.

While Kulthep is happy with the growing popularity of Thailand as a film location, he feels this will improve further if the government provides more tax incentives to foreign film units.

But he is concerned about a new media law that proposes more bureaucracy and inflexibility for foreign film companies in Thailand.

“We have much competition from many neighbouring countries,” he said, adding that countries like New Zealand, Malaysia and Indonesia were opening their doors to foreign films.

He said the US film “Anaconda” – starring Jennifer Lopez and Jon Voight – was originally supposed to be shot in Thailand and ended up going to Fiji because they offered $6 million towards production costs.

Kuthep said he was working hard to get the Indian film industry to hold the Indian Film Academy Awards event in Thailand in 2008. The Indian Oscars, he said, was watched by millions of TV viewers in India and around the world.

South Africa and Malaysia have held the event in the past, and this year’s event will be held in Amsterdam.

While his father and brother are busy with property and other businesses, Kulthep said he would focus on the entertainment industry. To that end, he says, his new hangout is a theatre in his home where he watches movies with his wife, Anoushka.

“There’s a boom in Indian tourists to Thailand, leading to a boom in Bollywood shoots and huge revenue for Thailand’s film industry,” the young entrepreneur said.

Lekha J Shankar

Special to The Nation

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