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Race to riches
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Uddhab Poudel
Movie producer, distributor & exhibitor
Sayapatri Films
Baba Film Exchange
Gopi Krishna Movies |
Whatever business he started was more profitable than the previous one. In this successively more successful journey, Uddhab Poudel, well-known for his innovations in the movie industry, has reached the health sector as an investor. But the journey has not stopped for this 50-year old entrepreneur.
Poudel differs from other entertainment industrialists in more than one way. For example, he comes with a background in politics while others can be found going into the politics only after they gather popularity in the entertainment industry. Apart from this, Poudel has had experience in running a transport company as well as a hotel.
He became famous after he started a multiplex - Gopi-Krishna Cinema Hall which now has seven theatres. Now he has partnered with other investors in setting up Om Hospital and Research Centre and recently in yet another venture in the health sector - Om Health Campus, in which he is the Managing Director.
Poudel's childhood dream was, however, to become a doctor. But as he could not score good marks in his ISc exams, he did not try for medicine but studied Arts. Immediately after SLC, he tried his hands as a scribe to prepare documents for land registration and made good money. Therefore, even while studying in the college, he continued this job. After studies, he invested money in the construction business. That was more profitable, he found.
So, he did not think of joining any organisation for employment. Rather he went on searching for still more profitable businesses. And he found cinema distribution as one such profitable opportunity. For this, his family relations with some local cinema distributors in Biratnagar came handy. During those days, cinema reels were brought from Kolkata and Poudel made a number of trips with them to Kolkata. He also started working as their subagent to distribute the cinema to other parts of the country. Gradually he started doing this business on his own as he found it quite lucrative. He recalls one cinema which he brought for about Rs. 70,000 and made over Rs. 500,000 by selling it in Kathmandu alone. In another one, which he had bought for Rs. 100,000, he made Rs. 2.5 million! "By that time I was one of the largest cinema distributors," he says. In fact, till then, the cinema distributorship was almost entirely in the hands of Indians. Poudel claims to be the first Nepali to really take away this business from them.
Meanwhile, he also ran a bus service and became the president of the Morang Transporters Association. Then he started a hotel as well (Birat Hotel). These businesses were possible as he had plenty of time available from the cinema distributorship. "If I brought one cinema, it would run for about six months and there was problem of finding a hall to run another movie," he recalls. But as the cinema business was very profitable, he had to increase the turnover, so he decided to set up his own cinema hall and run the new movies. That is how the Gopi Krishna Cinema Complex came into being. For this he sold his buses and hotel to arrange the capital.
Before this, he had started making Nepali films as well. Though some Nepalis had already started making films on their own, one producer approached Poudel to finance part of the production as the producer was running short of cash. Thus he became the producer of Kusume Rumal, which became the first Nepali movie to celebrate its silver jubilee. And it earned about Rs. 6 million, very good money at that time - 1986. He went on to produce 12 feature films during 1986-2005 including Jaya Baba Pashupatinath which was both in Nepali and Hindi. Meanwhile he made a movie ‘Gopi Krishna’ and out of the proceeds of this movie he set up the cinema complex. He says, the money he earned from each of his movies was much more than what he expected. Now his company Gopi Krishna Movies (P) Ltd. has all the cinema production facilities in the same premises where the cinema halls are situated.
The cinema business was so relaxing business for him that he even had time for politics. He was Upa Pradhan Pancha (deputy mayor) of Biratnagar Municipality and member of the Morang District Panchayat during the Panchayat days. But he was expelled from the post owing to breach of the Code of Conduct, which is showing activities that were in favour of multi-party political system.
But now he is devoted to the cinema industry and he claims that he is the largest investor in this industry so far in the country.
Meanwhile, his association with another moviemaker and medical doctor Bhola Rijal led him also to invest in healthcare business. He is a co-investor with Dr. Rijal and his colleagues in Om Hospital and recently they have set up Om Health Campus to produce human resources in health sector.
And again he says, this new business (health) is more profitable than cinema business. "Now the cinema industry is not so profitable due to the current situation of the country," he says. However, he likes to be identified more as a film industry person than anything else. And he hopes he will now try to create his identity in the international cinema world, beginning with the SAARC region. For the domestic market too, he wants to produce different type of movies, targeted at the higher class of the society. "If we can make such movies, it may find a market in the SAARC region and even outside," he thinks. His recent visit to Britain has been instigating him to make movies in English also. "When recent start ups are making movies in English and reaching the international market, why not I who has been making cinema for the last 25 years?" he wonders.
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