CyberMedia IPO coming soon

CyberMedia, one of South Asia's biggest specialty magazine groups, will be going for its IPO "soon". Speaking on the sidelines of a press conference, Pradeep Gupta, CMD and Publisher of the group, while revealing this clarified that "soon means sooner than" six months.

The organisation which brings out nine publications, including Dataquest, PCQuest, Voice&Data and BioSpectrum, was planning on an IPO in May 2004 but postponed it due to the post electoral upset in the market.

Though details on the exact amount that is expected to be raised as part of the IPO are not clear, the money will be used to fund future ventures of the media group, including entry into foreign markets.

CyberMedia also announced a strategic tie-up with US based Dice Inc., a provider of online recruiting services for technology and engineering professionals.

By this joint venture, which will come into effect three months from now, CIOL jobs, the job protal within the group's online brand ciol.com, will cease to exist. Its assets will be merged into the new entity to create CyberMedia Dice Careers Ltd., which will function as a portal separate from ciol.com.

"CIOL jobs brings in around Rs 7 lakh every month by way of advertisements. With the joint venture, we are looking to address new revenues streams like selling job packs to recruiters, pay based access to resumes posted on the site and advertisements. Due to all of this we expect a huge growth in revenue," said Abraham Mathew, president of ciol.com.

By the terms of the agreement, CIOL will provide the manpower and management in India, while investment and technology will be pumped in by Dice. Equity break up and exact investment details were not available.

In keeping with this general expansion mode, the group will be launching a magazine targeting the BPO segment of the country.

It recently started a pilot project for a magazine targeting outsourcing clients abroad, called Global Outsourcing. Both the projects will be launched by early next year. CyberMedia closed last fiscal with a topline of Rs 58 crore and expects to close the next one with Rs 75 crore.