Indus Fund To Pick 8 Per Cent In Utvi
Indus Venture Fund, an overseas venture capitalist, has decided to invest Rs 9 crore for an 8 per cent stake in UTV Interactive(UTVi), a subsidiary of the Rs 1.75-billion UTV Group. This will be the first round of venture capital funding for UTVi.
The key assets of UTVi are broadband, regional language portals and its library. In the broadband arena, UTVi holds 65 per cent of UTV's recently-launched streaming portal, sharkstream.com, which offers video-on-demand. The interactive company has also launched two regional portals: tamizha-tamizha.com in Tamil and English and kemchho.com in Gujarati and English.
Ronnie Screwvala, chairman, UTV said, "The regional portals are mainly aimed at non-resident Indians, a majority of whom are Tamilians and Gujaratis. We are planning to launch three more dual language portals by September-end."
He said that content for regional language genres comes through its alliances with Zee, Star, Sony, Sun among others.
UTVi owns the entire Internet rights of UTV's large library comprising 5000 hours of programming in seven Asian languages. The interactive company has a 10 per cent stake in US-based homelandnetworks.com, a portal aimed at NRIs, Chinese and Latin Americans. The 10 per cent stake is in swap for content and not in cash, said Screwvala.
UTVi also has a 3 per cent stake in soundbuzz.com, a portal focusing on promoting major Asian and international recording labels and unsigned artistes. Biren Ghose, chief executive officer, UTVi said the company "will be increasing its stake to 10 per cent shortly," adding that soundbuzz.com will be introduced in the country by the first week of June. Another initiative of UTVi is tsnshop.com, a dedicated e-commerce cybermall with multiple storefronts.
Speaking on the revenue sources for UTVi, Srewvala said that while the regional portals will be earning through advertisements, the broadband will receive revenue through subscriptions and advertisements in the ratio of 10:1. The business to business portal of the interactive group covers two activities - to supply content to homelandnetworks.com and to leverage equity.
T. Thomas, chairman, Indus Venture Management said, "Our company has a policy of not funding dotcoms. UTV Interactive, however, has the backing of a huge media company like UTV which has not only the content but also has experience in the entertainment line."