Manmohan Shetty to recreate theme park magic with more funding

By Shruti Chakraborty

The Adlabs Imagica theme park just outside Mumbai on the Mumbai-Pune highway has a few roller-coaster rides. The largest roller-coaster ride in India ‘Nitro’ is yet to be launched.

Quite like the story of Adlabs Imagica itself, some or actually many visitors to the park, on the day we visited, seemed to be excitedly getting on to the roller-coaster rides while some others stood by watching the fun and see how the ride turns out.

In various aspects of the theme park, there are those who are excitedly looking to partner with Shetty on his dream project, while some others want to wait and watch how things turn out. Shetty has financed the project from bank loans, though it has been reported that the company is looking to sell stake to raise $50 million in funding.

[caption id=“attachment_906735” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] In various aspects of the theme park, there are those who are excitedly looking to partner with Shetty on his dream project, while some others want to wait and watch how things turn out[/caption]

Confirming this, Shetty says: “The company is looking to raise funds and 60-70 percent of the work on the deal with ICICI Venture is done but there are some problems on valuation.” He says he is expecting the deal to come through.

Shetty also confirms that the company is likely to eventually look at an IPO to fund its expansion plans. The company will open a second theme park in Hyderabad in two years, he says. Other locations the company is most likely to look at are Delhi and Gujarat.

Shetty, a veteran in the entertainment industry, has been working on the Adlabs Imagica project ever since he sold his company Adlabs Films to Reliance Entertainment. His daughters Aarti Shetty and Pooja Shetty Deora have been working with him closely on developing the theme park.

The daughters, who also work on Walkwater Media, the film and television production business, say they have so far been juggling the work on the theme park and on the films business just fine. “We are currently shooting for the sequel of Tere Bin Laden and also have four more projects lined up. The scripts are about 60 percent done,” Aarti Shetty says. She laughs a little as she adds “We are multi tasking at another level now.”

(Shruti Chakraborty works for Entrepreneur magazine. To read more about how the journey has been and plans about the way forward watch out for the story about Adlabs Imagica in the July 2013 issue of the magazine)