Badshah of Bollywood Shahrukh Khan has no intention of selling his stake in his IPL cricket team Kolkata Knight Riders. In a rare interview with CNBC-TV18, Khan spells out the business plans for his company Red Chillies Entertainment.
Below is a verbatim transcript of his interview with CNBC-TV18's Swati Khandelwal.
Q: What are your plans for Red Chillies?
A: We started very small, but lately I have started thinking that I would go a little big in terms of film production at least. So far we have done normally at any good time one or maybe the second film kind of starting once we are finishing the first one. We have a bit of television going, we have advertising going, we have a good VFX unit. So we are in a way technologically a little advanced as far as the production side is concerned.
But creativity requires a lot of time as to what story content has to be. But this year we have set up a new office now. We have all the youngsters who have grown with the company who are all I guess itching to get into cinema, make films. I think now I feel the need to start making 4-5 films. When you make 4-5 films, the company has always run on ‘no profit, no loss’ kind of criteria to start off. If the film does well good but at least we don’t try to lose money.
But now with 5 films on the floor yes it will become a little unaffordable. But public, no. I think I am too busy with the creative aspects to really get into business in such a big way. But if I have guys in the office who would like to do it, it's their company, they can take it public.
Q: How big is the company at this point in time and how much investments have already gone into it?
A: It's got a very big heart. We have been working on it for what, around 7-8 years now, about 9 years we have been making films. We have made about 9 to 10 films. Some of them good, some of them fantastic, some of them pathetic.
A lot of investment has gone in. I don't know the exact figures. But what we have tried to do is we have never borrowed money. The money is essentially brought in perhaps sometimes personally and then we work towards making sure it is returned. So it is kind of debt free. If that makes any sense, I keep hearing people saying companies are good when they are debt free. So we don’t have any loans or debts. Everything that is invested in the company is personal and then been earned back as the years have gone by.
Q: Another company, KKR, the entity that’s doing reasonably good now, what's the plan really there? We were hearing about a possible stake sell, you may look at raising money through stake sell in that company. Is that true? What do you have to say on that?
A: I don’t know every time our team loses a match they say I am selling the company. So it has got nothing to do with the cricket part of it as far as the company is concerned.
We have to wait for the rules, what's happening now. There is a lot of unknown right now. So on the business front it is very clear KKR is owned by us, myself and Jay (Jay Mehta,) and Juhi (Juhi Chawla Mehta). We will keep it. We haven’t really sat down ever and thought of - I keep reading that we are selling our stake. But I have never really seriously ventured or thought about it.
If I ever do it then it would be not dumb money, it would be strategic money. I would like to do it with a sporting kind of a partner who knows more about sports instead of just making a fast buck. That's not what we are in the business in KKR for.
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