CSC, October Cinemas tie up to open 10,000 cinema halls in rural areas by 2024

New Delhi: State-run CSC e-Governance Services will open 10,000 cinema halls in rural areas by the end of 2024 in collaboration with October Cinemas, a statement said on Monday.

The opening of such facilities is part of an agreement signed between CSC, an SPV under the Ministry of Electronics and IT, and October Cinemas.

The agreement has been signed with an aim to open around 1 lakh small movie theatres in rural areas, each having seating capacity of 100-200 seats. The timeline for the agreement period has not been defined.

"The concept of cinema halls in villages is still new. The aim is to start small cinema halls with around 100 seats. CSC cinema halls will open new avenues for our VLEs (Village-Level Entrepreneurs).

"Entertainment sector is booming in India and our VLEs will help in the growth of the sector in rural and semi-urban areas. CSC cinema halls, which will also work as a commercial hub, will make our services more accessible to the people in rural areas," CSC Managing Director Sanjay Kumar Rakesh said.

Under the memorandum of understanding, CSC (Common Service Centre) plans to open 1,500 cinema halls by the end of 2023 which will also act as a hub of various CSC activities in rural areas.

"We are launching CSC Rural Cinema for the entertainment of villagers in remote areas. India is the world's largest entertainment market in terms of movie consumption. Our venture will have features to control piracy of films. We have already got over 5,000 express of interest requests from VLEs. We hope to make around 10,000 cinema halls operational in rural areas by the end of 2024," Punit Desai, Managing Director of October Cinemas.

He said that an investment of around Rs 15 lakh is needed to run these cinema halls which will have video parlour cinema licence.