User:Chris Calvin/Banijay Asia

Banijay Asia is a production company creating premium content for television, films and OTT platforms, with expertise across all genres including entertainment, factual, scripted and reality across all territories in Asia.

Launched in early 2018 as a joint venture between Banijay Group and Deepak Dhar, Banijay Asia aims to expand Banijay’s presence in India and South East Asia. In a colaboration with GroupM and Myntra they created India’s first digital reality show - Myntra Fashion Superstar and the award winning web adaptation Hostages, based on the Israeli TV series titled the same.

History
Banijay Asia was founded in April 2018 by content powerhouse Banijay Group, who are setting up its office for India and South East Asia, in partnership with Deepak Dhar, former Endemol India managing director. The new company, which is a 50-50 joint venture between Banijay and Dhar, was aimed to expand presence in India and Southeast Asia.

In July 2018 Rishi Negi was appointed as Chief Operating Officer, taking the responsibilities for commercials, strategies, finance and production operations.

Colaborations
A month after founding, Banijay announced that they are getting in a partnership with the Indian film actor and producer Salman Khan to create content across television and web formats. This partnership was part of the plan to see Banijay Asia and SK TV providing scripted and non-scripted content across the numerous interesting genres in India and South East Asia.

In January 2019 the company announced a partnership with Dhoni Entertainment — a company floated by the former captain ‘cool’ of Indian cricket, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who has entered the entertainment business with a long-term partnership deal with production house.

In June 2019, Banijay Asia dealed a partnership with GroupM, the world's largest advertising media company by billings, which was the first of kind partnership for GroupM to create scripted and non-scripted content across genres for TV and video streaming platforms.

Productions
The first production announcement came in January 2019, revealing a ghost stories by Ruskin Bond, titled ‘Parchayee’, that are workin on to come alive on ZEE5, an Indian video on demand platform, set to premiere on January 15, 2019 followed by one story release each month till June.

The docu-drama web serias Roar of The Lion, where MS Dhoni plays the protagonist and narrates their comeback story was announced in March 2019. The official teaser for the series was unveiled on 5 March 2019. The official trailer was unveiled on 9 March 2019 by Hotstar.

The colaboration with GroupM joined hands with Myntra to create India’s first digital reality show - Myntra Fashion Superstar. The eight-part reality show goes live on the Myntra app on September 17. Actor Sonakshi Sinha and celebrity stylist Shaleena Nathani were judges of the show.

Based on the Israeli TV Series Hostages, Banjay hired Sudhir Mishra to helm an Indian web adaptation having the same name - Hostages. The series were co-starred by the award winning actors Ronit Roy and Tisca Chopra. The series were highly accepted and recieved a nomination for best male actor on IReel Awards, and also took awards on the Gold Awards in 3 categories, Best Actress, Best Actor and Best Drama Series.

Together with Salman Khan, Banijay took the production of the famous show Nach Baliye since season 9. In December 2019 Banijay started a collaboration with the famous Bear Grylls to explore the action-adventure genre.