When horror film took Indonesia by storm last year, it didn’t just overtake global blockbuster on its way to become the highest-grossing local movie ever.
The tale of a group of terrorized college students in a remote jungle village also minted a fortune for Manoj Punjabi, the co-founder and chief executive officer of movie producer PT MD Pictures. The Jakarta-listed company’s stock has risen 186% since the film was released last year, vaulting Punjabi’s stake to $1.6 billion.
That elevated the film producer to an elite 10-digit club along with film executives including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Jerry Bruckheimer. And he’s using that windfall to build a new Hollywood-style empire in the world’s fourth-most populous nation.
“It’s a remarkable success given the fact that he’s only famous to Indonesians,” and more recently to other communities in Asia, said Jeffrey Bahar, chief operating officer at Singapore-based Spire Research and Consulting. “Manoj Punjabi is only now going international.”
It’s a noteworthy turnaround for Punjabi, 50, who flitted between business ideas after studying marketing and finance at Indonesian European University in the country. He was fired from his job at a pulp and paper company after just three months. After those initial missteps, he joined his father Dhamoo and uncle Raam Punjabi in the movie business in 1995.
The family was already prominent in the Southeast Asian nation’s entertainment circles. Raam, known as Indonesia’s ‘Soap King’, had dominated the short-format telenovelas known as in the 1990s with his PT Tripar Multivision Plus. But in 2002, Manoj and his father parted ways with Raam to form their own firm, MD Group.
Like his uncle, Manoj initially produced soap operas before he expanded into movies five years later. But the newcomer’s first film flopped.
“I thought I was doing so well, so let’s just do a movie,” said Punjabi. “But I went to the cinema and saw only seven or eight people in the audience.”
A breakthrough came in 2008 when MD Pictures released a movie that broke the box office record that had been held by James Cameron’s for a decade in Indonesia, Punjabi said. Since then, the company has produced some of the country’s most popular films. Another big step came when Punjabi listed his company in Jakarta in 2018.
All that spurred Tencent Holdings Ltd. to buy a 15% stake in MD Pictures for some $50 million in 2021, a move spurred by the Chinese technology giant’s desire to have a footprint in Indonesia as well as the popularity of the firm’s video streaming platforms, according to Punjabi.
Two decades since founding, Punjabi is a household name in Indonesia’s entertainment and media industry, which is the 15th largest market in the world with $13 billion in revenue, rivaling Brazil, Mexico and Spain, according to a PwC report. Its revenue is forecast to grow 7.7% through 2027 amid an expected surge in consumer spending as well as demand for streaming services.
The nation’s cinema- and streaming-boom is allowing Punjabi to spend his new-found wealth. Punjabi held his 50th birthday and the company’s 20-year anniversary last year with a party themed on in Bali. Guests included coal billionaire Garibaldi Thohir, former minister of trade Enggartiasto Lukita and local celebrities.
In a video interview posted on YouTube three years ago, the billionaire gave a tour of his house, which has a gym, sauna, bar, spa and hair salon. His Rolls-Royce and Bentley were shown parked in the driveway.
“You have to fail to succeed. I still fail and that’s the bottom of my success,” Punjabi said in the video.
Meanwhile, Manoj’s uncle Raam has also benefited from the boom. He listed PT Tripar Multivision Plus in May. Its shares have gone up 193% since then, boosting the value of the 84% stake held by the elder Punjabi to $229 million, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the filings.
The Punjabis are “Indonesian Hollywood,” said Satrya Wibawa, the head of the Center for Creative Industries at the Graduate School of Universitas Airlangga. “They work with most of the well known directors as well as introducing most of the acclaimed actors and actresses in the history of Indonesian film industry.”
