Tata Internet Weighs Strategic Tieups For Portal

G Madhavan, chief operating officer, said: "We are open to all three models: revenue sharing, a plain click-through arrangement or equity tie-ups. But we would prefer to get into equity participation arrangement so that we can control the content flow."

"The primary criterion will be whether these portals have a sustainable business model and have some complimentarity with our operations," he said. Madhavan said that some of the tie-ups have already been put in place and formal announcement would be made soon.

Tatanova.com, which will go on-line in another four weeks, will offer a bouquet of around a dozen vertical portals, of which two, a women's portal and a travel portal, were launched yesterday -- travnova.com and womennova.com.

 

The company, which is a wholly owned by Tata Industries, has made investments of around Rs 70 crore for portals, infrastructure and the proposed Internet access business.

The Internet access service will also be launched in another 6 weeks, and the company is planning a presence in 8-9 of the largest cities in the first phase. Madhavan said over the next 6-12 months, Tata Internet Services will be making investment of around Rs 150 crore.

The funds are currently being provided by Tata Industries, but funds requirement would continue to rise as the company would look at acquisitions in the next phase of growth. "It is difficult to attribute a time frame within which we would look at acquisitions, nor on the amount of funds that we would then require," Madhavan said.

For the horizontal portal, the company would also provide vernacular language content and set up broadband portals, but only at a later stage. "We would not like to offer any translated version of the English content, and vernacular content will have to be rich. Broadband portals can only come later after the bandwidth issues are sorted out," Madhavan said.