Radio company bullish on India

Worldspace plans campaign to popularise jazz music

Worldspace Satellite Radio, the US-based radio company, is bullish on India as they are expanding marketing alliances with leading music retailers in India like Planet M and Music World, as well as distribution alliances with leading coffee chains like Barista and Café Coffee Day.

"We are planning to foray into more regional languages and offer more subscription variety for our listeners," said Shishir Lall, managing director, Worldspace Satellite Radio.

At present, subscription fee starts from Rs 1,000 for 6 months, Rs 1,800 for 1 year and Rs 3,250 for 2 years, which works out to approximately Rs 150 per month.

Worldspace entered India in 2000. "As of March 2005 we had around 21,000 subscribers in India. In 2005 we undertook an extensive marketing and retail network expansion across the country and within a year, subscriber base increased to more than 1,11,000 subscribers by March 2006," said Lall.

In India, Worldspace currently delivers 41 radio stations. Globally Worldspace offers a total of 58 radio stations.

"We do not air commercials or sponsored programmes. Our revenues are completely subscription driven," Lall said.

For the second quarter of 2006, Worldspace reported revenues of approximately $3.8 million worldwide. For Jan "� June 2006, Worldspace has reported revenues of approximately $7.2 million worldwide, which includes over 130 countries including India and China , all of Africa and the Middle East and most of Western Europe.

The company offers two Indian classical channels and regional Indian channels such as Tara (Bengali), KL Radio (Tamil), Sparsha (Kannada), RM Radio (Malayalam) and Spandana (Telugu) on its network, and currently has over 159,965 subscribers worldwide and 119,497 subscribers in India at the end of the 2 nd quarter of 2006 (ended June 30).

Some of the company's more popular stations include 'Play' "� sports radio station, 'Moksha' "� spiritual and wellness station, 'Radio Art of Living' "� Sri Sri Ravishankar's foundation on radio, and 'Tunak Punjabi' "� a Punjabi radio station.

The company recently signed Indian music impresario A R Rahman as their brand ambassador in India.

In India , the company is headquartered at Karnataka and maximum revenues are collected from this state although company officials claim that other states are fast catching up.

The company also has an alliance with WEBEL to explore technology transfer for the assembly, installation and commissioning of a broadcast infrastructure, including gap fillers, that work in conjunction with the Worldspace Satellite Radio services.

"We are also planning to bring US-based Jazz musicians to India to popularise Jazz music in India ," said Pamelaa Hall, programme director, Riff Jazz Music Station, one of the Jazz music channels on Worldspace Satellite Radio.