Kerala- born entrepreneur Shrikant Bhasi promoted Carnival Group declared that the deal to buy Reliance MediaWorks’ Big Cinemas was concluded on Tuesday. With acquisition of 250 screens at around Rs 700 crore, this deal has made Carnival Group owned Carnival Cinemas one of the largest multiplex chains across cities in India.

Carnival Cinemas has presence in 89 cities with 344 screens at 122 locations out of which 126 screens are in tier- one cities, 55 in tier- two and 163 in tier- three cities of India.

“We are thankful to Mr Anil Ambani for giving us this opportunity. The deal went on smoothly. Our focus is on the tier 2 and tier 3 cities in central and north India. We have a vision to have 1000 screens by 2017 and we want to make cinemas synonymous to Carnival,” said Carnival Group chairman Shrikant Bhasi after closing the deal.

The announcement of this sale was made last year in December and after due approvals the transaction has now been closed. Till date this is the largest deal in the multiplex sector.

After successfully running a multiplex business in small towns of southern India, Shrikant Bhasi decided to take Carnival Cinemas to other smaller cities across the country. Subsequently, last year, his Group took over HDIL’s Broadway Cinema chain which had 33 screens across Mumbai, Delhi and Indore. His next major step was the acquisition of Anil Ambani owned Big Cinemas and later he acquired Stargaze Entertainment owned Glitz Cinemas which is a part of Capital 18, a subsidiary of Mukesh Ambani’s Network 18 Media and Investments Ltd.