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The year was1978. Ketan Mehta was several bagsful away from completing his first Gujarati feature, Bhavni Bhavai. The Rs 3 lakh he had received as seed funding from the government-supported National Film Development Corporation wasn’t adequate, so Mehta, lead actors Naseeruddin Shah and Smita Patil, and a few friends formed a co-operative to fill in the shortfall of Rs 6 lakhs. Shah and Patil earned Rs 3,000 each in actor’s fees. Although it was widely acclaimed on the international festival circuit, Bhavni Bhavai – one of the most significant films to emerge out of the Indian arthouse movement – was poorly distributed back home.

The year was 1987. Aditya Bhattacharya needed cash – and fast – to finish his maiden movie Raakh. Bhattacharya and his co-producer, Asif Noor, met with Harish Sugandh, the owner of the video label Indus, to discuss pre-selling the video rights. Harish Sugandh wasn’t very excited about the film but his brother, Jhamu, was. Jhamu Sugandh gave Bhattacharya and Noor Rs 10 lakhs in cash, stashed away in polythene bags. Two guards set out with the men that evening to ensure that they got home safely with the money. Raakh, starring Aamir Khan in his only arthouse role, was completed in 1989. While it didn’t set aflame the box office, it has earned a cult following since its limited release.

The year was 2008. Rajat Kapoor’s Mithya, which he had wanted to make for several years, was finally released. Producer Sunil Doshi had seen Kapoor’s Raghu Romeo at the Locarno Film Festival in 2003. He asked Kapoor if he could make a film for less than Rs 63 lakhs. Kapoor made Mixed Doubles in 2006, and its decent box-office run made it easier for Kapoor to find finance for Mithya.

Independent filmmaking has never been easy in the country’s filmmaking capital of Mumbai, a city that values profit over art. Directors dealing with unconventional (and thus potentially unsalable) subjects have always struggled to get somebody to write a cheque for their dreams. But now, offbeat has become official. Lining up to invest in Hindie cinema are independent producers, film banners, production houses, entertainment firms, companies such as Reliance and Mahindra, and non-resident Indians. They’re all using the same strategy: invest a relatively small amount of between Rs 2 crores and Rs 6 crores (blockbusters cost upwards of Rs 25 crores), release fewer prints than the average commercial Hindi movie, concentrate on the multiplexes and rely on favourable reviews to create a buzz about the movie.

Everyone’s got their own reasons for getting in on the game. For old-time Bollywood banners, funding Hindies adds colour to a bouquet dominated by mega-budget productions. For instance, Karan Johar’s populist Dharma Productions is producing Ayan Mukherjee’s Wake Up Sid, which it describes as a quirky urban comedy. Corporations such as Reliance BIG Entertainment are attracted by the economies of scale that low-budget ventures offer, said film producer Sunil Doshi, who heads Handmade Films. By producing four big-budget films and keeping aside smaller sums for smaller movies, large corporations feel that they can “service all kinds of tastes and temperaments among audiences”, Doshi said. So in addition to financing mainstream movies by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Vivek Agnihotri, BIG is producing films by old Hindie warhorses Shyam Benegal and Sudhir Mishra.

UTV, which has produced biggies such as Rang De Basanti, Swades and Jodhaa Akbar, is taking Hindies so seriously, it set up a separate unit called Spotboy Motion Pictures in 2007 expressly to produce small-budget movies. Spotboy is UTV’s counterpart to Fox Searchlight, the indie unit of Hollywood giant 20th Century Fox. Spotboy’s productions include Aamir, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! and this fortnight’s release, Dev.D. Spotboy Chief Operating Officer Vikas Bahl and his team approve ideas, vet scripts and see them to their conclusion. “We like to take ideas from scratch and develop them,” Bahl said. “We like to be part of the process. We don’t get into movies that are already on the floor.”

Corporate financing has resulted in a virtuous circle. It has prompted the movie business to become more organised and transparent in recent years, making it easier for directors to find funding for both small and big films, said Pritish Nandy, the founder of Pritish Nandy Communications, whose films include Jhankaar Beats, Chameli, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and Pyar Ke Side Effects. “A well-made film lends prestige and honour to a company,” Nandy said. “It also makes money when it is well distributed and put out in a befitting manner.”

It isn’t only corporations with the megabucks that are making Hindie dreams come true. Smaller investors are also jumping on to the bandwagon. Producers Giulia Achilla and Raj Yerasi raised funds for Raja Menon’s Barah Aana from private investors in India and the US. Yersai wouldn’t reveal the movie’s budget, but he showed the investors that they weren’t throwing away their money. “We ran them through the economics – the values of the rights, the recoveries and presented them with a very compelling business case for making the investment,” he said. “They read the script, took the call to see if it had the mass appeal. I think they saw an interesting opportunity.” The movie premiered at the International Film Festival of Kerala in 2008 and will be distributed by Shringar Films in March.

Among this new breed of investors is Delhi software-company owner Rishi Chandra, who has produced Khargosh, the new movie by Tunnu Ki Tina director Paresh Kamdar. Chandra, a graduate of IIT-Kanpur, is that rare producer who doesn’t want to make a film that will be easily marketable. “I want to make a world-class art film,” he said. Khargosh is based on a short story by Kanpur-based writer Priyamvad. Chandra spent Rs 1.5 crores of his own money and he’s looking for distributors, mindful of the fact that Khargosh’s experimental storytelling style won’t be easy to sell. “It’s not a commercial film, but it will be appreciated by people who have an artistic sense,” Chandra said. “This isn’t an audience that has been catered to.”

Though funding for small films has become easier, it isn’t without its drawbacks. Many of these new funders have a “conveyer-belt” attitude to cinema that is a result of a mindset that defines movies as “projects”, complained Sunil Doshi, who has produced Mixed Doubles, Bheja Fry and Hulla. He claims that Handmade Films is different. “We have nobody to answer to except ourselves,” he said. “We get involved in developing the movie and thereafter give complete independence to the filmmaker.”

These non-traditional funders have also demonstrated an antipathy towards potentially controversial subjects. Ketan Mehta’s Rang Rasiya, a biopic of the painter Raja Ravi Varma that will open in March, was refused funding by several companies because they felt it was too risky. Rang Rasiya portrays Varma as a sensualist who refuses to accept any curbs on his artistic expression. “I’ve financed the film myself with credit from the market and a loan from IDBI Bank,” Mehta said. “It’s actually back to square one for me.”

Movies that can easily be summarised in a Powerpoint presentation stand a better chance of securing funding than films with more far-out themes, as Homi Adajania found out. Adajania, whose English-language Being Cyrus had a four-week box office run in 2005, had to shelve his second film, Resurrection, after its producers, Saif Ali Khan and his producing partner Dinesh Vijan, found it “too whacked out and non-commercial for Indian audiences”. The movie was about “a detective in the early 1900s who turns out to be Satan and cracks a murder case which doesn’t really happen”, Adajania explained.

Besides, when they’re pitching for money, Hindie filmmakers can’t afford to forget that they operate within a star-led system, said Parvati Balagopalan, who directed Rules: Pyar Ka Superhit Formula, a romcom with Milind Soman and Meera Vasudevan, and the March release Straight, starring Hindie darling Vinay Pathak as a London chef confused about his sexuality. “Many small films are doing well, but then big films are doing badly,” Balagopalan said. “There’s no guarantee that your film will be viable even if the content is good. The audience is there but it’s difficult to reach. It’s easier now to make a film, but it’s not that easy to get a release.”