Mahendra Soni: The Powerful Force Behind Bengali Cinema

TINDS Spotlight · Kolkata, India

Long before he became a Kolkata entertainment entrepreneur, Mahendra Soni was fifteen the first time he sat down to actually work — not chores, work — inside his family’s business in a middle-class joint household in Kolkata. His mother tongue is Marwari, but Bengal was already shaping everything around him: the language on the street, the films playing in the neighbourhood halls, the sense that this city ran on stories nobody had figured out how to scale yet. This profile is part of TINDS’ Spotlight series on South Asian entrepreneurs building lasting institutions.

Mahendra Soni: The Kolkata Entrepreneur Who Gave Bengali Cinema a Business

Three decades later, that instinct has become SVF Entertainment and its streaming platform Hoichoi — a full-stack operation producing films and series, distributing cinema, running theatres, and reaching more than 250 million Bengalis worldwide. Mahendra co-founded it with his cousin Shrikant Mohta after noticing the same gap over and over: the talent and the stories were there, but the industry around them wasn’t. “SVF started with a simple mission,” he’s said, “giving Bengali stories the platform they deserve.”

That gap is easy to underestimate from the outside. Bengali cinema has a century of history and a genuinely large audience, but for most of that history the industry ran on informal financing, single-film production houses, and distribution deals negotiated one theatre at a time. SVF’s founding bet wasn’t that Bengali stories needed to exist — they already did — it was that they needed the same infrastructure Bollywood and Hollywood had long since built for themselves: reliable capital, a production pipeline, a distribution network, and eventually a direct-to-audience platform that didn’t depend on any single cinema chain.

Building the Business Bengali Cinema Never Had

What makes SVF unusual isn’t any single hit — it’s that Mahendra and Shrikant built the entire cycle: production, distribution, music through SVF Music, cinemas, and eventually Hoichoi as the OTT arm. “We understand the entire cycle,” Mahendra told TINDS. “Seeing the full board helps us make sharper decisions.” Launching Hoichoi was the real turning point, Mahendra says — the moment the audience stopped being just Kolkata and became “New Jersey, London, Dhaka,” a diaspora spread across continents that finally had one place to find Bengali content.

Owning the whole cycle also means SVF isn’t betting everything on one format. A film can underperform in theatres and still find its audience on Hoichoi months later; a Hoichoi series can build enough of a following to justify a theatrical spin-off. That flexibility — Mahendra calls it a hybrid strategy elsewhere in industry interviews — is part of why the company has kept growing through a period when many single-format studios and standalone OTT streaming platforms have struggled.

Thinking in Decades, Not Fridays

Entertainment isn’t a stable business, and Mahendra doesn’t pretend otherwise. “One Friday you’re celebrated, the next you’re questioned,” Mahendra says. “Cash flows fluctuate and risks are constant. We survived by thinking in decades, not quarters.” His leadership style reflects that same steadiness under pressure: fast decisions, real ownership, and a stated willingness to back people long-term “if they’re committed and honest.” The romantic version of the entertainment industry — glamour, red carpets — isn’t the one Mahendra lives in. “It’s actually contracts, numbers, release strategy, risk management, and constant pressure,” he says.

Beyond Bengal: SVF’s Newest Chapter

In 2025, SVF marked its 30-year milestone with a slate of 25-plus new titles and the launch of hoichoi TV+, alongside stated plans to expand into Bangladesh, Southeast Asia and the Bengali diaspora. Mahendra told Variety at the announcement: “Three decades later, our passion hasn’t changed, only our ambitions have grown.” That growth is no longer just about reaching Bengali speakers elsewhere — it’s about reaching beyond the Bengali language entirely.

In January 2026, SVF released its first Gujarati film, Jai Kanhaiyalall Ki. By late March, its Hindi-language series Chiraiya — an adaptation of SVF’s own Bengali hit Sampurna — landed on JioHotstar and reportedly crossed 10 million viewers within weeks, according to Ormax Media’s Shailesh Kapoor, making it India’s second-most-watched web series of 2026 so far, per Business Standard.

On home turf, the slate hasn’t slowed either — Saptadingar Guptodhon, the fourth film in SVF’s own treasure-hunt franchise, released in Bengali theatres in May 2026. For an audience in Bangladesh specifically, the diaspora push isn’t abstract — Hoichoi Bangladesh has already been producing local content for several years as part of it. Mahendra is clear about what all of it is actually for. “The goal is to scale regional stories globally,” he told TINDS. “Creators should earn fairly and work in systems that respect talent. When IP is built and monetised properly, culture becomes stronger.”

What’s notable about the Hindi and Gujarati moves specifically is the direction of the bet: instead of licensing outside content to grow subscribers, SVF is exporting its own Bengali-language back catalogue into new markets by remaking it. Chiraiya proving out at scale on a major national platform like JioHotstar is, in effect, a signal that stories built for a regional audience can travel — a case Mahendra has been making in interviews for years, now with a number attached to it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why This Kolkata Entertainment Entrepreneur’s Work Matters Here

Mahendra organizes his own work into must-do, should-do and nice-to-do, he says, “to reduce noise and stay focused” — a habit that scales oddly well from a single day to a thirty-year career. What Mahendra has built isn’t glamorous behind the scenes, but it’s the reason Bengali stories from Kolkata now sit on the same screen as Bengali stories from Dhaka, watched by the same diaspora audience TINDS writes for.

That’s worth paying attention to, even if his name never appears on a poster — for more on where South Asian entertainment is headed next, see TINDS’ News & Media coverage.

💬 Comments are open on this feature — tell us what you’ve been watching on Hoichoi lately.

⭐ Continue Reading

Sources

1. SVF Entertainment — Leadership page
2. Wikipedia — Shree Venkatesh Films
3. Variety, March 17, 2025 — “Prosenjit Chatterjee, Dev Headline SVF and Hoichoi’s Content Slate for 2025-26”
4. Business Standard, April 18, 2026 — “SVF, at home in the world: Can it move successfully beyond West Bengal?”
5. Wikipedia — Jai Kanhaiyalall Ki
6. Wikipedia — Saptadingar Guptodhon