Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. was founded on 29 October 1962 as a book-circulating library by the Maroo brothers (Buddhichand, Atul and Raman) in collaboration with Gangajibhai Shethias.[4] The name of the company is an acronym for the founders’ surnames. The library was located at Warden Road in South Mumbai. Three branches were opened soon after. In 1979, they expanded to include video home system (VHS) tapes in their collection by partnering with affluent business families who had their personal collections of movies. In 1987, the company forayed into content distribution via the VHS format, which was labeled Shemaroo Video Private Ltd. They also bought rights to several movies for home video and were one of the first brands involved in the distribution of video rights in India. Shemaroo started buying cable and pay television rights in the 1990s. In 1995, the company bought an equity stake in Sony's Indian TV channel while negotiating a deal to buy films of Sony's Columbia Tristar