Microland Group To Go Public With Subsidiary

Pradeep Kar-promoted Microland Group is looking at making one of its group companies public by March 2001.

The Bangalore-based group's subsidiaries include itspace, planetasia.com, media2india.net and indya.com.

"We are looking at making one of these subsidiaries public," Pradeep Kar, chairman of Microland Group, said. He, however, did not specify the company that will be listed or whether the group is looking at Indian bourses or any other international stock exchanges.

Microland also plans to raise about $ 10 million for its Internet company itspace.com and is talking to various institutional investors, including Chase Capital, GE Capital, ICICI Ventures and IL&FS for the same. The funding is expected to be finalised by June this year.

Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp is also slated to bring in funds to itspace.com.

The group company planetasia.com, according to Kar, had gone in for its third round of funding: "In the third round, the company has mopped up about $ 10 million," he said.

The third round of funding, which took place in March, saw Vinod Khosla also pumping in funds into the company.

"We plan to go for the first round of funding for our technology portal itspace.com by June this year to raise about $ 10 million. We will approach the group's existing investors for the placement of funds," Kar said.

The group will go in for an out side funding agency only if it fails to raise funds from its existing investors.

Kar, however, declined to comment on the amount of stake to be divested by Microland in the subsidiary.

The group also plans to have a major thrust in the Internet media arena. It has rechristened its group company Micromedia as media2india.net.