Exciting Times in Film Distribution: The secret project I’ve chiseled for four years
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On February 9, 2010, I was handed over a small cheque… for myself. It was made out by a startup company that I founded four weeks prior to that. The amount wasn’t hair raising, infact it was small that it would barely last two weeks.
But, it was my first cheque in four years. After walking out of a cushy job four years ago, diving headon into PFC, working 12 to 14 hours each day, every day for four years until last November… for no pay… it was my first pay cheque in a long time. And I did not know what to do with it. All I thought was Wow, I’ll have a large beer tonight… and so I did.
Carrying the idea for four years, trying everything possible to get it kick started, it has been a very long journey, a lot of struggles, few ups and a lot of downs.
Initially I shared the idea with a few friends both on and off PFC. WB, was the first to encourage me, he always has this eye for unique projects in technology and he knew I was on to something. t! (a.k.a. Biwijee) was consistently helping me along with WB to chisel the idea. Refining it further and further. The problem was I did not know or had experience in asking for money a.k.a. investment. And the project did need a lot of money.
Its then Subrat and Shripriya dived in to help me on that front. Introducing me to some of the most encouraging angel investors, while helping me build a business plan. Then I discussed it with Anurag (Kashyap). I did want to know what the guys from the industry would look at this project as. After all it was the filmmaker who would be benefitting, along with the producers and distributors. He along with Nishikant Kamat, encouraged me to come to India which I did in early 2009.
I went all around. Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad – everyone would encourage the project, but money was still not flowing in. It was one of the most frustrating and depressing times.
Everyone who met and saw the presentation knew the idea was mind boggling. Yet, things don’t happen until the stars in the sky, smile.
And then when I’d almost given up, last November, a group of young and energetic, VCs and entrepreneurs who invest in Technology, had their quarterly competition for investing in a new idea. My application went through. Along with 10 others. They called. Can you come to give us a presentation. Sure. The problem was I had to fly to Indiana on the other side of the country and I didn’t have money to buy myself a coke can. I gave up. Almost. I’m not good at competition and contests. Forget it. Then Biwijee stepped in, foot (hers) met the ass (mine), paid for the journey and sent me packing.
Four weeks later. The idea I was carrying for four years was declared the winner. I flew back to Indiana which is where the startup company was formed and took off.
My concern was how would PFC be run, but a new team of volunteers immediately stepped in and have seamlessly taken over the daily operations. Thank You Sethu, Magik, Neeraj, Uh, Ram, Tanul for volunteering everyday to take care of PFC after returning from your regular day jobs and bringing so many creative ideas to the passion!
And of course to t! (Biwijee), Rakesh, Om, Varun and WB who kept me sane and motivated in the most trying of times.
The project is half way through. And what is it? To the Producer, Filmmaker or Distributor: Think of it as a one click distribution system for your movies wherever you want to, over the web, to any device you want to, all – at zero cost.
Its too easy an explanation, so perhaps seeing the product would give you the clearer picture… which happens in May 2010. Hopefully I’ll be meeting many of you to give you a presentation in person, in the next few weeks of our quick journey through India. If we haven’t been in touch for the movies you make, produce or distribute, please feel free to call and leave us your name and number on the phone listed on our project-site given below.
The response has been overwhelming positive. Yesterday we had a fantastic curtain raiser at the awesome SXSW in Austin. And in India, thanks to a few movies that recently released online, it has made our jobs easier to help the industry understand and give them the accurate picture. What these movies did, is 10% of what our product will be… It brings a very exciting mighty revenue model. Every filmmaker and producer will now have a fair opportunity to distribute their movie and not have to go without it. Every desi or desi movie watcher will be able to watch their favorite upcoming movies, without having to painfully wait for the DVD or worse a torrent file off a pirated camera print.
Above all for me, it’s the coming together of the right combination of technology from video to streaming to geo mapping to HD to bandwidth to security to… four years of a long journey, that ends in the next few weeks making way for an exciting new one…
Thanks to Magik for giving the startup company its name. Dingora (in advance: the name doesn’t meant a thing 
)
The site currently has a coming soon welcome page geared towards producers and filmmakers. Do click through and register for updates.
And lastly for all those, who are on their own personal journey, facing struggles big and small… There’s ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS light at the end of the tunnel however long the tunnel may seem to be!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Rahul Dholakia
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Varma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Sachin Kundalkar
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Truly truly exciting Oz. Congratulations from the bottom of my everything! Will be watching your whole Dingora dance very intently
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Congratulations and wishing you nothing but success.
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Dear Oz,
You stuck with your passion and let your courage drive you to your destination. I am very glad for you. Congratulations and good luck for Dingora.
Jateen.
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Congratulations dear Oz. Though it’s just the start of the journey yet the initiative itself is a great achievement. Kudos. And yes your whole post about the journey so far and the last sentence was truly inspiring. It reinvigorated me.
Bas ab to Dingora ka dhindhora bajte huye dekhne ki aasha hai.
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oz, I’m very happy for you. I wish Dingora lots of success. I do hope you guys mean Roku ( or Boxee, slingbox, or something similar ) when you say online. Matlab I still want to watch the movie on TV only, not sitting in front of a computer. Using WDTV and Roku, I get youtube, amazon and netflix on my TV ( not computer, who wants that ?) So if dingora becomes an app on roku or wdtv or boxee or whichever, I can click my remote, pay & watch movies from Dingora on my TV. That would be sweet.
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Kenny, M340, Jateen, Jahapanah…. thanks hope to see you all on the other side of release
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Hi Oz.. this is great news!! Congrats dude. I hope this will be very useful for indie filmmakers. All the best!
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It sounds very exciting. Congratulations Oz. I wish you all the success.
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WOW thats great news
m very exited
Congratulations \\m//
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Lao jee Pehlan taan bahut saariyaan mubarakan. And I just pray to GOD that you get all the success that you deserve.
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oz bhai : heartiest congratulations! when we met last year, with Magik and co, i did have an inkling of doubt that u were upto something awesome. and this is fabulous news. all the very best sirJi
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Sahi hai Boss…Thank God you wrote a post about this. I had lot of stomach pain keeping this with me for the last one year
.
Red Wine
?????
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Wow, you got me floored by your tireless effort. I’m in awe, sire.
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Heartiest Congratulations.. Interested in knowing how exactly Dingora will deal distribution and revenue model.. but the introduction is pretty intriguing !!
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WHOA. this is freaking awesome news. all the best oz bhai… am so happy & proud… beer ki barsaat hogi aaj yahan! let me maaro a line i heard on a tv show: Jab tak bika na tha, koi poochhta na tha, tumne khareed kar humein anmol kar diya! waah kya sher hai… waah kya her hai… maar hi daala! :bow:
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“foot (hers) met the ass (mine)” nostalgic kar ditta tussi. miss desitrain days like crazy. hope you compile those posts & publish a book… you’ll never have to wait for pay cheques… khushi ke aansoo and all that jazz.
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+1. I seriously miss DesiTrain!
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Yea, Magick bhai, agree with you. Oz should do something like the great bong. I hope…..one day. I’ll be one of the first ones to buy the book. It’s so disheartening to read how much awesome desitrain was when you can’t read it anymore. I guess we people who got affiliated to the internet late really missed the train
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Wasn’t the last post on DesiTrain about the travails of following his own dreams and sitting in the nearest Denny’s to have a burger at 1am? Miss those days (of reading DT and sitting in Denny’s at 1am – both!)
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Valiant effort. But I think it would work great if you can bundle a couple of movies with ISP’s so that the consumer pays just 1 person, while the ISP ensures the bandwith to watch the movie uninterrupted.
This would also make the consumer’s life easier, dont have more details about what u’re doing, maybe this is ur plan..
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Congratulations Oz-ji !!!
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Heartiest congratulations to Oz and the entire team. Dingora seems to be very exciting. And a truly inspiring backstory. My best wishes.
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congratulations. Seems like a radical distribution model, that was needed badly. Wish you all the luck ahead
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You guys had a curtain raiser at SXSW??!?!?!? I am so jealous.
Wish I had friend like yours!
Times wouldn’t be half as bad then…
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Heartiest Congratulations dear Oz. Dingora seems to be a very innovative and exciting idea. I’ve already signed up. Hope to see lots of gr8 stuffs happening in the near future. Hats off to your dedication and struggle sirji,it’s really amazing. Best of luck.
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Looks very interesting. infact one friend of mine was discussing similar idea last night and I can see how much it can make a difference to limited prints releases by leveraging such a platform. I am making a guess as to if u have a android/iphone app in ur mind?
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Its a major “technology pull” idea…and a fantastic one.. all the best Oz..may you have all the success!
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Oz bhai- extremely happy moment indeed and I’m so glad for you.This is indeed true passion & conviction.All the very best indeed, this is exciting
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like very much!
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Congrats Oz! You deserve all the breaks that you get…! Looking forward to Dingora’s launch….
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Congrats Oz! Do well; u deserve it…
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Congrats OZ and best of luck for the future.
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Congratulations and good luck, Oz!
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Dingora!! the baap of all whacky names and i couldn’t think of anyone else except Magik bhai to have come up with it!!
i need to have a smoke over this!!
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Congratulations Oz…may ur venture turn out to be very successful…actually ur confidence shows that it will be…
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Thank God for your kinds. If it hadnt been your kind of pursuing types, us have-nots would still be watching puppet shows in tents
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I was actually waiting for somethin like this to happen for our Indian films after reading soo much into innovative distribution strategies used in the west (youtube rentals, VOD, Sundance NEXT and all DIY stuff)… and here comes the good news. This is great achievement.
I’m sure it will be a great success for all our mainstream movies and that inturn will help u get a lot of paycheques like these (hopefully)…which u deserve….! But i hope we dont forget the little gems and the Indie film industry who read and comment on ur blogs everyday (most of them established n upcoming filmmakers) who keep the very spirit alive that ur post talks about….’light at the end of the tunnel’…..and their dreams and works that have actually made up PFC, are the ones who will actually look up for your support… !
May the Indie spirit be alive!
Cheers and good luck!
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Wow. How inspiring! Four years?! And I guess this means you are the founder of PFC (something whch I had not quite grasped all these years). Kudos to everything – PFC, Dingora, your hardwork, perseverance and passion! All the very best!
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I love this. Congrats. Great stuff. Inspiring.
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Oz,
Congratulations for Dingora!
And to the team that keeps PFC going..rock on!
Thanks,
Vishesh
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Congratulations Oz!
bhagwaan kare dingora ka dhindhora poore duniya mein sunayi de.
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Thank you all. Hope to see you all upon its release. Will answer some of your direct questions shortly! ~ Jai Dingora
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Go Oz Go! This is going to be an amazing business project and someday when you are an old fat rich guy (I know you are not in it for money, but when someone works for something for four years without a cheque, eventually that guy is gonna go rich) you can produce films for young directors like me. God bless you, Oz, thanks a lot for PFC.
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I bow Oz. . .this shall become a new milestone in film distribution. AMEN!
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What wonderful news! Heartiest Congratulations Sir Ji and best wishes for the future
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Finally..Thanks Oz..and congratulations!! I hope it is what I make of it..now the only middle-MAN would be dingora…the target audience would be tapped…and and and, i would be able to consume the movie directly from the original sources
also, me thinks, that this way there’d be more creative freedom and less pressure from the producers(to put in the absurdity of an item song – which the target audiences hate and the people for whom it was added never buy the ticket to watch the film anyways)…
OMG! Advantages of dingora continue..
was this also in your presentation by any chance Oz?
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Jai Dingora,Congrats Sirjee.
Hope it will also reach Small towns like Dombivili, where we have to wait eons even for Hollywood Pirated movie dvd .
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Oz bhai, This sounds awesome!!! Firstly a thousand Salaams to your perseverance and dedication !! I definitely see this ushering in an exciting new age for Indie filmmakers. Hopefully the big producers and distributors will also adopt this model because it surely sounds like a model that will help filmmakers get their movie out to the widest possible audience.
Can I dare to suggest that a lot of us here would love to see the global premiere of AK’s “Paanch” on Dingora …that would be a sweet debut for both!
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nice suggestion there…Paanch should be the first movie to release on Dingora…
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Congratulations and best of luck to you an all of us also,
as a indie filmmaker i am looking forward to it ….
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Jai dingora!!!
Excited as hell and Best wishes to the Team that made it possible.
One more way you have inspired me to take on to the path of dreams Oz…
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great effort…!! much needed!! I am sure it will be very innovative…
but name? Dingora? D-I-N-G-O-R-A? the name sets itself for puns… i hope you guys change it! sounds too cheesy/trivial
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congrats Oz, and wish you unlimited success in your venture.
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Oz sir, This sounds promising and really cool. Most of the good films didn’t reached to the audience or movie piracy is there becaz lack of distribution. I hope this pays the way to others in innovation in film distribution.
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Wish you the best of luck for the journey and hope it matches your team’s expectations.
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“”We are not releasing ‘Love Sex Aur Dhokha’ internationally because the recovery for small movies is not possible outside. We plan to take it to festivals instead,” Sunny Khanna, senior vice president of Balaji Motion Pictures, told IANS. Love, Sex Aur Dhokha takes a look into three stories unfolding across and weaving through each other.”
No longer once Dingora goes live!!
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Dingora is too vague.
Teri Picture, Mera Projector, Paise Nakko would have been more self-explanatory.
Don’t you guys have any creativity in you?!
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Great Great thing! Hope never again to be taken hostage by some bollywood oldies:))
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Best of Luck..hope that small films will benefit..
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Thanks mate! I was in fact gonna ask on PFC for such a medium. I have co produced a film and am going through a lot of grief trying to get it screened / aired, it is a marathi movie and a very bold subject apparently. This would be of much help thanks again for your brilliant initiative, stupendous courage and persistence. And to all those who believed in your ability and understood your vision, thank you all!
Cheers!
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Congratulations to Oz bhai and team. Hope this becomes a mile stone in the film industry and future film students would do research on the evolution of the concept and on Oz bhai at various film schools
am curious to know more about Dingora.
my best wishes.
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Congrats Oz bhai…all the best for the new venture.
Ashu Bhai MAPRM wale
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Congrats Oz bhai n best of luck for ur journey ahead…
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Oz, thats wonderful:-)! All the best to you and your team. Waiting to get more info on Dingora soon. Hope its the kind of stuff that can make it easier for us to convince the indie producers to fund films.
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Sounds really cool
Congrats ! Truly constructive.
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Wow! Very happy to hear this! I hope the project takes off big time and we see in our time Oz fulfill the potential that he is born with. All the best!!
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congratulations..
it is great to know there was light at the end of your tunnel..
back to my tunnel..
-n
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congrats buddy… its an example of true passion
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Heartiest Congratulations Oz bhai. You have come a long way. I got to know about PFC through Desitrain more than 3 years ago. Good luck and all the very best for Dingora.
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A ja bhai we r waiting!
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very proud of you Oz. very heart-warming to read about the journey
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Nice. Congrats, Oz Bhai.
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Oye yaar, from where did u guys bring all these ideas………heartly congratulations to you and your team sirji
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read this in Sunday Mid-Day
http://www.mid-day.com/specials/2010/mar/210310-dingora-online-film-website-play.htm
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Very inspiring stuff Oz bhai! You make us all very proud. Wish you the best for the Dingora
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thanks for giving us PFC.
Thank U VERY MUCH.
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Congrats OZ.
Perseverance and not bravado wins the war….and so said Napolean once.
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@Oz
So what’s the status? When is it going live? Please update the webpage as it still says coming May’2010.
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