Manmohan Shetty is an Indian entrepreneur who founded and developed Adlabs Films Ltd, one of India’s largest media and entertainment firms.
Shetty was born and schooled in Mangalore in India to a Tulu-speaking Tuluva Bunt community. He later studied Arts at Mumbai’s Somaiya College and started his career with Adlabs.
Shetty founded his first company Adlabs Films Ltd. as an advertising films processing company in 1976. Soon, the firm ventured into feature film processing by setting up a state-of-the-art laboratory in Film City, Mumbai.
He produced films like Ardh Satya, Chakra, Hip Hip Hurray, Holi, and more. In the meantime, Adlabs Films Ltd. went on to win the National Award several times for its technical contribution to Indian cinema. At first, it did films for advertising; the first feature film it processed was Masoom, a Shekhar Kapoor film. Eventually, it grew to control the processing of almost 90% of the Hindi film industry. It specialized in enhancing 16mm films to 35 mm format. It won several national awards as the best film processing laboratory.
Shetty established Walkwater Media Ltd in 2007. It is an integrated business encompassing production across films, television, animation, other media as well as intellectual property exploitation. His two daughters, Pooja Shetty-Deora and Aarti Shetty are associated with the company.
Shetty started another entertainment project under the name of Adlabs Imagica. Adlabs Imagica is a theme park built at a cost of 1600Cr INR, on a 300-acre site, between Mumbai and Pune on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. The park has around 500 employees and can accommodate as many as 20,000 visitors.
Shetty is an ex-chairman of the National Film Development Corporation. He has been associated as a producer with films like Ardh Satya, Chakra, Hip Hip Hurray, Aaghat, and Holi. His production company, Entertainment One, has produced films like Gangaajal, Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon, Inteha, and Munnabhai MBBS.
