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| Pressmart to invest Rs 15cr in expansion |
| K Rajani Kanth / Chennai/ Hyderabad Jun 12, 2009, 00:45 IST |
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Pressmart Media Limited, a print-to-digital delivery services subsidiary of Hyderabad-based publicly listed company BodhTree Consulting Limited, will be investing Rs 15 crore in scaling up its operations this year.
The two-and-a-half-year-old company plans to utilise half of the $6-million (approximately Rs 30 crore) fund that it raised from early stage venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and NEA IndoUS Ventures in September 2008 to open offices and for roping in channel partners in North America, Africa, Europe, UAE, Australia and Southeast Asia, besides upgrading software and hardware capabilities.
“We have seen a huge spurt in business in the last six months, making our presence felt across 42 countries and 22 languages from the earlier 30 and 12 respectively. The proposed investment is to lay groundwork for rapid expansion in international markets and take our clientele base from 600 now to 2,000 by the end of June 2010,” Sanjiv Gupta, chief executive officer of Pressmart, told Business Standard.
With the publishing houses’ readership shrinking and advertising revenues declining courtesy the recession, Gupta said, companies were now rethinking their economic models. “Give the users content the way they want to consume it is the new mantra and publishers are now looking at less-expensive models like hosted and pay-as-you-go services,” he added.
According to estimates,global print readership is currently pegged at 1.4 billion readers daily. Worldwide, there are over 1 million publications including dailies and periodicals, while about 150,000 publications are registered with the Registrar Office of Newspapers for India.
Stating that news has gone beyond print to handheld devices, Gupta said Pressmart was currently in talks with all the major devices manufacturers across the globe to offer its applications. The company had in February this year launched its live new-on-the-mobile – which provides consumers free news content and access to their favourite newspapers while on the go – on three Motorola phones.
“The next wave will be pre-bundled news on handheld devices and we should be able to be on 15 different devices including mobiles, readers, PDAs and iPods in the next one year,” Gupta said adding the company expected Rs 15 crore revenues this year and Rs 45 crore by FY11.
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