Japan’s largest brokerage house Nomura Holdings Inc is investing $16 million in Chennai-based Real Image Technologies Pvt Ltd, a media technology company. Real Image specialises in digital media technology for the film, video, audio and animation industry worldwide. The investment, which has been made through Nomura’s Asia merchant banking division in Hong Kong, is to take advantage of the growth in India’s movie industry.

Real Images has also received funding from Intel Capital, the venture capital investment arm of Intel Corp (NSDQ: INTC). in 2006. Real Images, formed in 1986, is also involved in out of home advertising, technology marketing, advertising film production and has also set up its training center.

As the entertainment industry is expanding, there are several companies servicing the market. Prime Focus, which works in the post-production and visual effects services, is publicly listed and has a market cap of Rs 565 crore. Recently Lighthouse Funds invested in a company called Word Infocomm Ltd that does subtitling for movies.

Nomura Holding Inc, which is a part of Nomura group, is ramping up its presence in India. The group is setting up an institutional brokerage business and has also signed a non-binding MoU with LIC MF for acquiring a stake in LIC Asset Management Company. Nomura, which was an advisor to Daiichi Sankyo on the Ranbaxy investment, is primarily engaged in activities like asset management, broking and investment banking globally. The company is also planning a $490 million private equity funds focused on Asia.

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