PVR is preparing to take its cinema business beyond Colombo, targeting six to nine properties across Sri Lanka over the next three-plus years as its first investment approaches payback.
The operator is in talks with potential local partners and is exploring markets including Jaffna and Kandy, with smaller cinemas and pricing tailored to each location forming the basis of its expansion plans.
The move would mark a new phase for a business that entered Sri Lanka with a single US$ 7 million investment at One Galle Face and waited to see whether the market would deliver.
It has, according to PVR Inox CEO of the Luxury Collection and Innovation and PVR Lanka Director Renaud Palliere.
The company expects to recover that initial investment within six months. Excluding roughly two years of pandemic closures, Palliere said the payback period would be about five operating years, in line with its expectations for a cinema of that size.
“We are in discussions with a number of people. We will see how it goes, but we’re quite determined now to move forward with this expansion plan,” Palliere shared in a discussion with Mirror Business.
PVR is seeking regional or national partners that see value in bringing the cinema brand into their property portfolios. The discussions have yet to translate into announced locations or opening dates.
The company has spent the past six to 12 months scouting the country for pockets of opportunity. Its existing customers have supplied some of the strongest clues about where to look.
Expanding into new regions across the island nation however, will require a different model from the nine-screen complex at One Galle Face.
Palliere said PVR was considering four to five screens per cineplex, reducing the footprint while adapting the offering to local demand.
The Colombo operation was designed for a prime property in a prime catchment. Replicating it across the country is not the plan.
Instead, the company is developing a choice of formats, drawing on its experience in India, where it operates cinemas for markets with different population sizes and spending power. Ticket pricing would similarly reflect the locations it enters.
The expansion ambition follows a period in which the Colombo business weathered pandemic closures and Sri Lanka’s economic upheaval while, according to Palliere, performing in line with its initial targets.
