In his early years, Vikram Malhotra didn’t have any special connection to cinema, besides occasional viewings with family. It had never been a career option as such nor did he know anyone from the industry.
Except for one esoteric connection.
Malhotra, founder and chief executive officer of Abundantia Entertainment, was born on 11 October, which happens to be the birthday of the “first gentleman of Indian cinema”. The period between 1975-79 was one of Amitabh Bachchan’s most successful, which worked out as a neat coincidence. Every time there was a party or an evening out during his birthday, Malhotra would be asked to recite a verse from a song or a dialogue from a Bachchan movie.
Several years later, Malhotra, 50, finds himself in the same industry as the Big B, as the head of a content company focused on “developing and producing progressive, insight-based and uniquely Indian stories” for a global audience.
The former chief operating officer of Viacom18 Motion Pictures has built a reliable inventory at Abundantia, with films like Baby, Airlift, Toilet—Ek Prem Katha, Sherni, among others to be followed by the first film of its partner company, Opening Image, called Subedaar with Anil Kapoor. At Viacom, Malhotra had a hand in other successful ventures, including Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Queen, Pyaar Ka Punchnama and Tanu Weds Manu.
Abundantia recently announced their artificial intelligence division, aION, to bring in “the game-changing power” of AI to their business. Malhotra believes a combination of data and instinct comes in useful in an under-researched, under-analysed industry, which cannot predict audience choices.
“With Abundantia aION, AI will act as an amplifier because the audience wants to be entertained, and won’t care less if it was AI or animation or live action,” he says, taking the example of Saiyaara as a film that worked because it addressed a younger audience unlike most other popular films tend to do.
At Juhu’s JW Marriott, a hub for many of Mumbai’s movie-related meetings, Malhotra finds a quiet corner in the business centre so as to avoid meeting too many people that he would know. Our conversation begins over a shared interest in tennis, on single-handed backhands and Carlos Alcaraz, before we can focus on the matter at hand.
Born in Jaipur to a civil engineer father, who had a transferable government job, and a schoolteacher mom, Malhotra lived all over the state, from Jaipur to Kota, Bharatpur, Alvar, Ajmer to Udaipur and then back to Jaipur where he finished his schooling.
He went to the University of Rajasthan, because going back to Jaipur also allowed Malhotra to pursue his primary interest, tennis. That occupied most of his attention, his singular focus through the 1990s, as he played for college, district and the state. It was when he finished his BCom that the “middle class reality” hit home. Tennis was not an economical sport nor a great career—at least at that time in India.
“I would have had to go all in on this (tennis),” he says about this inflection point. “But by that time, I was old enough to sense the environment around. Sport matures you faster because you see so much through travel.”
Tennis had to give way to something more tangible.
Malhotra looked up to a senior in college who had gone to Mumbai for an MBA; so he followed suit. “Honestly, I had paid absolutely no attention to academics or career up till that point in my life” says Malhotra, who did his MBA in marketing from K.J. Somaiya Institute of Management, University of Mumbai.
From 1999-2009, Malhotra worked in building brands and businesses across companies such as The UB Group (spirits, airlines, sports), Tata Communications (retail internet) and SC Johnson—DraftFCB (FMCG). He had never worked in media or entertainment before an opportunity with Balaji Motion Pictures Ltd came calling.
Movie studios in India were beginning to get professional, moving on from being just family-run businesses. Balaji wanted new perspectives; Malhotra sought something different to what he had already done. It took three meetings with his future employers before Malhotra got convinced that this could be the right fit as COO.
He spent 13 months there, rebooting Balaji’s movie business, enjoying some success, and dealing with a reportedly mercurial employer. “The workings of this industry carry significantly more interest than the working of other industries by the nature of the glamour of it, the gossip value of it. In Ekta (Kapoor), I found someone who carried passion into every single meeting. She would sleep with thoughts of making movies. She would get up in the morning with thoughts of making movies.”
With films such as Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, Shor in the City, Dirty Picture, Malhotra felt he had achieved in a little over a year what he had set out to do in three. By this time what Studio 18 (also known as Viacom18 and now part of JioStar) group CEO Haresh Chawla was seeking to do matched Malhotra’s aspirations.
In a largely inclusive world of Indian movies, which frequently fends off questions on nepotism, it wouldn’t have been easy for Malhotra, with a background in advertising and sales, to fit in.
“From the first day that I came to this business to the 16th year now, I constantly carry the label of being an outsider,” he says, “sometimes directly to my face, mostly in hushed voices. At every point in time, everything that I’ve been fortunate to do, has been shaped from that perspective.”
The resistance continues, he adds, because traditionally this business has been run, earlier globally and definitely in India, in a bit of a closed silo among a certain bunch of people, families and companies. “You had to be an insider to be able to succeed in this business. When you start questioning the norm, trying your hand at new things that aren’t comfortable to egos, to the way status quo is, that leads to resistance.”
What he tried to do at Balaji—and more so at Viacom18 as COO—was to bring in consumer learning, back unconventional work. He believes a creative executive in a studio or a marketing or a distribution executive should have the same kind of ownership for a film as a writer or a director would have.
“I’ve had people sit across in meetings saying, this is not how scripts work. I’m a curious kind of a guy by nature, so my first reaction would be, I’m happy to learn how they work. The fact of being an outsider allowed me to do so much unconventional stuff.”
By 2013, his life felt like it was in transition. His wife Roli was pregnant with their second child—the first was two years old. Malhotra had recently bought a home on loan, when he decided to chuck a job and raise funds for a new venture.
He takes a moment to explain that while he never had an entrepreneurial bug in him, he realised that a lot of the work he had done had been semi-entrepreneurial, like at UB. He felt that there was a massive demand for content and at age 38, he could give himself that shot. Tennis had taught him to play for every point with the same intensity, while taking a few risks along the way.
Abundantia, started in 2013, was an early mover in streaming, with its Amazon Original Breathe in 2018 which had three seasons. Coming up next are book adaptations of best-sellers like Flawed—the Rise and Fall of India’s Diamond Mogul Nirav Modi among at least a dozen other projects.
Malhotra debunks a frequently discussed notion that the entertainment business is on a slump, saying instead that people are watching more videos and listening to more music than ever before. “We cannot blame our inability to find resonance with consumer choices as saying that the business is low,” he says.
“How is it that from 2022 to 2025, Hindi cinema is delivering bigger hits than before? Why is it that more people are watching southern-language films? Why is Kantara doing as much or more (business) in Hindi than its native language (Kannada)? Why is it that Hollywood continues to put so much focus in India if people aren’t going to theatres?”
“They aren’t going to theatres for the lowest common denominator stuff,” Malhotra adds. “They aren’t going for genres for which they feel a better product is available on streaming.”
He says this aura that’s being created about the business being in a low phase is damaging to the industry, scaring filmmakers and creators and taking away the ability to take risks. “Instead of channelising our effort towards what people want or could want, we are busy taking safe bets. We have stopped making films that we believe in.”
Abundantia has been profitable over the last five years, with revenue consistently crossing ₹200 crore, according to Malhotra. Projections for FY26 are along the same range even as discussions are underway to raise capital for expansion plans, including increasing development and output capacity.
His tennis playing has reduced substantially, partially because as a father of three and as the head of a film company, Malhotra is stretched for time. Another reason, he says with a smile, is that it’s difficult to get him off a tennis court once he is on it. “One more game” becomes his favourite phrase.
He is partial to dramas set against the business world and often watches reruns, like the third season of Peaky Blinders which he recently saw again. He is impatient with content and moves on quickly if something does not hook him immediately.
“In many ways, and I say this to myself, I am the audience,” says Malhotra. “I’m not a purist. I don’t come from film school. I’m not somebody who grew up on world cinema. That’s not my sensibility.
“I enjoy entertaining content. I enjoy engaging content.”
Arun Janardhan (@iArunJ) is a Mumbai-based journalist who covers sports, business leaders and lifestyle.