Foreign Equity In Sony Tv To Be Hiked To 64.5%

Foreign equity in Sony Entertainment TV (SET) India Pvt Ltd is increasing from 60 per cent to 64.5 per cent. The proposal has been okayed by the government recently.

A major portion of the foreign equity in SET India is held by Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE), a group company of Japan-based Sony Corp. SET India markets and takes care of distribution of Sony Entertainment TV and SET Max channels and CNBC India, apart from exporting programmes for telecast on the Sony channels.

According to documents available with Business Standard, "Foreign equity in SET India will increase from 60 to 65.4 per cent amounting to Rs 1,61,16,350 by way of acquiring 111,653 equity shares of Rs 10 each from the domestic promoter and one of the foreign collaborators to be subscribed by both the foreign collaborators."

 

The realigning of shareholding is the result of Atlas selling to SPE Mauritius Holdings Ltd 111,653 shares representing 4.5 per cent of the paid up capital of SET India.

SET India in mid-90s was granted foreign collaboration approval for production of television programmes in Indian languages primarily for export, sale and distribution of Indian language audio-visual productions.

SET India has set itself an ambitious revenue target of Rs 800 crore for the year 2000-2001, signifying almost a jump of 100 per cent of its target for 1999-2000. The revenues will accrue from ad sales, distribution, etc. Last fiscal SET India's total revenues were over Rs 400 crore.

The SET India board has also okayed taking about 20 per cent stake in CNBC India, a joint venture currently between TV-18 Ltd and CNBC Asia.

Buoyed by good performance SET is also prowling the Net in India. Riding the euphoria that Japan-based Sony group's PlayStation2, game console with Internet capability, has been generating in Japan, SET India has initiated talks with portal- companies here.

Recently SET had announced a joint venture with Fresh Lime Soda Interactive (India) Pvt Ltd and Applitech Solution Ltd to run a vertical youth portal freshlimesoda.com.

Ahmedabad-based software development company Applitech Solutions Ltd has 33 per cent equity in this venture. Freshlimesoda is SET's first Internet initiative. As a 33 per cent equity holder in this venture, Sony will focus on building the site into a global youth brand.

Sony Entertainment Television will contribute by way of expanding content and also provide infrastructure in terms of marketing, sales and creating synergy across all levels.

SET's Internet forays here are in lines with sweeping restructuring unveiled recently by Sony, the Japanese electronics group, aimed at positioning the company for the Internet era.

In Japan, Sony had announced it was considering an initial public offering of its Internet service provider, Sony Communication Network, that markets its business under the name So-net.

Sony had said it would create a US holding company called Sony Broadband Entertainment, that would include Sony Pictures Entertainment (having interests in SET India) and Sony Music Entertainment.

The new company would seek to strengthen Sony's online content distribution and would consider alliances with broadband distributors in the US.