News Tv To Invest $300 M In India

News Television India Ltd, or Star India, the Indian arm of Star TV, has sought the Centre's permission to invest $200-300 million in various sectors, including information technology and entertainment.

The proposal is slated to be taken up today by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board along with the proposals from Sun TV and Rediff.

According to industry sources, part of the foreign direct investment will be used to fund Star India's infotech expansion plans, including broadband services, as well as to leverage the wireless application protocol (WAP) technology for content delivery.

News TV India recently set up a new Internet division to be headed by Lalit Ahuja, formerly of LGSoft. The unit will be headquartered in Bangalore.

 

Star India also plans to invest about $60 million to set up a production base in the country. This will be used for producing programmes for TV channels and, at a later stage, for making films, an area Star India is keen on.

Star TV has already roped in actor Amitabh Bachchan to host an expensive show, Kaun Banega Krorepati to be aired on Star Plus.

It has also entered into a contract with the British Broadcasting Corporation for a Hindi version of BBC World's popular Yes Minister, along with some other programmes. The Hindi version of Yes Minister is slated to be produced for BBC by Prannoy Roy's NDTV, which will be aired on Star Plus. Other BBC programmes are also slated to be produced by Indian production houses. But these production houses will need the approval of Star India management.