MUMBAI: Asia Vision, a consortium of home video majors Bombino, Indus and Time, will soon become a defunct company.
 

The business activities of Asia Vision will be pursued independently by the three companies. "We will be phasing out Asia Vision. We will be pursuing these interests in our individual companies," says Time Group promoter Dhiraj Shah.
 
 

Asia Vision's exclusive licensee deal with Columbia Tristar to distribute the Hollywood major's home video products in India ended on 31 July. "We have been licensee holders of Columbia Tristar for the past four years. The contract is not being renewed," says Shah.

Asia Vision has also stopped purchasing and selling cable TV rights of movies. "The cable TV business is piracy driven. We decided to get out of it. Asia Vision doesn't indulge in trading of movie rights to the cable TV industry anymore," says Shah.

A few years back, the company had sold its 49 per cent stake in Cable Video India Ltd (CVIL) to Hinduja TMT. CVIL, in which HTMT already held 51 per cent stake, owned and operated CVO, a cable Hindi movie channel.

Asia Vision has also stopped acquiring satellite and terrestrial rights to movies. A major chunk of the library has been sold to Zee Telefilms, Star India, Sahara, and Doordarshan. "We have 200-300 movies still remaining in the company. We plan to sell them and exit," says Shah. Asia Vision had major activities in trading on satellite and terrestrial rights of movies.

All these activities will be pursued individually by Time, Indus and Bombino. Time Group continues to be involved in movie production and acquisition of multiple TV rights of movies.

Asia Vision also runs commercial video copyrights under which it issues movie licenses to video parlours across the country.