Broadcast Worldwide To Raise Rs 150 Cr

Broadcast Worldwide Pvt Ltd, a private regional satellite broadcasting company, plans to raise about Rs 150 crore to carry out expansion plans in India.

The money will be raised through a combination of venture capital funding and an initial public offering (IPO) of Rs 100 crore.

The company is promoted by former STAR TV India chief, Rathikant Basu, who is now the company's chairman and CEO.

The company also plans to launch two new channels, a Bengali movie channel called Tara Talkies and a Calcutta-specific cable-delivered channel.

Negotiations are at an advanced stage, with the company and three domestic venture capitalists proposing to raise a second tranche of Rs 50 crore.

 

The VC fundings will be decided in two weeks' time.

The company, which has started satellite channels in Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi under the brand name of Tara, plans to stream video on the Net through its regional language portal, Tarawor-ldwide.com.

Streaming video on the Net is a Web broadcast technology that makes video directly available on the Net without going into the hassle of downloading it and then viewing it.

"Our entire strategy is to go live (with certain programmes) in three months time when we get the uplinking permission and become an interactive channel," Basu said.

"After streaming the video on the Net, the next step in our expansion plan would be to take these channels abroad. Also we would like to enter into e-commerce related to these regions," Basu said.

"After being launched in the Indian sub-continent, these channels will be taken to Australia, Europe and the US to meet the ethnic requirements of Indians settled in these regions," he said.

The company is also looking at other regional language channels. "We are yet to decide on the languages - out of Bhojpuri, Marwari, two South Indian languages," he said.

The company is targeting a channel share of 10 per cent in Bengal, around 6 per cent in Punjab, 6 to 7 per cent in Gujarat and for the Marathi channel, 4 per cent in Bombay and 8 to 10 per cent outside Bombay.

Broadcast Worldwide

has appointed market research firm IMRB to carry out qualitative analysis and research to help the company come out with programmes that match the audience requirements and profile.

After launching the Bengali and Marathi channels, the Punjabi channel is next to be launched.

Tara has formed a strategic alliance with the Indian Express group for editorial content for the news bulletins for the Punjabi channel.

Presently all Tara channels are free-to-air digital channels and are being uplinked from Bangkok-based THAICOM3.