Shemaroo

Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. is an Indian content creator, aggregator and distributor, specifically in the media and entertainment industry. It was founded by Buddhichand Maroo in 1962 as a book circulating library under the name Shemaroo and set up India’s first video rental business in 1979. The company went national after it began content distribution in 1987, became aggregators and bought rights to movies for home video.

Currently, the brand has a collection of more than 3700 movie titles in multiple Indian languages and offers services to customers in more than 30 countries, including USA, UK, Singapore, UAE and Australia.

The company’s partners for content distribution include Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, iTunes, Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Tata Sky, Hotstar, etc. Shemaroo has offices in Mumbai, New Delhi and New Jersey.

Early years
Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. was founded on 29 October 1962 as a book circulating library by the Maroo brothers (Buddhichand, Atul and Raman) in collaboration with Gangajibhai Shethias. The name of the company is an acronym of the founders’ surnames. The library was located at Warden Road of South Mumbai and opened three branches soon after.

In 1979, they expanded to include VHS tapes amongst their collection by partnering with affluent business families who had their personal collections of movies.

In 1987, the company forayed into distribution of content via the video home system (VHS) format, which was labeled Shemaroo Video Private Ltd. They also bought rights to several movies for home video and were one of the first brands involved in distribution of video rights in India.

Shemaroo started buying cable and pay television rights in the 1990s and in 1995, while negotiating a deal to buy films of Sony’s Columbia Tristar, the company bought an equity stake in Sony’s Indian TV channel.

2000s to present
Shemaroo became an integrated content media house with the commencement of Digital Post Production Facilities. The company ventured into film production with movies like Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye, Omkara, Ishqiya, Dedh Ishqiya, Hunterrr followed by several others in the subsequent years.

The company forayed into digital animated films with Bal Ganesh and Ghatothkach as their initial features and became the only company to release one feature every year thereafter.

The brand also owns an online retro music channel, Filmi Gaane, which offers classic Bollywood songs from the 1950s to 1990s.

In 2012, Shemaroo completed 50 years of operations and in 2018, the company unveiled a new logo and tagline ‘India Khush Hua’.