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@NDTV NMC: Mainstream Digital Media; Display Beats Search Advertising?

Nikhil Pahwa — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:19:51 -0500

Mainstream Digital Media? A term for us to consider - when asked about Motorola's (NYSE: MOT) position on spends on regional language content, Lloyd Mathias, Marketing Director for India & South West Asia said that the company doesn't have a position on regional digital media- "We target mainstream digital media".

Display vs Search advertising: "We found display marketing works better than search - 2.5 times more than search, and I can contest that." Manish Vij, Chief Business Officer of the Smile Interactive Group put forth a fairly strong challenge to search marketing; makes me wonder if there has been a significant shift in spends from display to search marketing. Vij said that when agencies started in the interactive medium, they undersold it by selling by Cost Per Lead. That's a vicious circle, because the day you stop spending money, the leads stop. "So don't put 100 percent of your money in just acquising leads". He also mentioned that people use search better than display advertising because analytics are not used well enough in display.

Publisher Issues: Dinesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO of IndiaMART raised a key issue during the discussion, something we've mentioned before at ContentSutra: that every site is priced the same - Rs. 100 cpm; there's no distinction between publishers, between social networks and websites. Also, where's the quality of inventory on the Internet? Responding, Vij mentioned that it's advisable not to have more than two banners on a single page - the ad gets served, but its not quality inventory. Ravi Kiran, CEO of Starcom (South East & South Asia) mentioned that this issue is valid for all kinds of media - what is high value for one brand isn't for another. Anurag Batra, MD and Editor-in-Chief of Exchange4media, moderating the panel said they don't sell CPM on exchange4media, but on the basis of the brand strength.

Some Numbers: Rohit Sharma, COO of Zapak mentioned that 70 million unique visitors have logged on to Zapak since launch; 38 brands advertised on the gaming site last year. Another interesting tidbit: someone from Times Business Solutions mentioned that 80 percent of marketing spends are online.

Still New Media? That's the question Ravi Kiran asked - how come we're discussing the same things we were four years ago? How come new media is still new media after 8 years? Dividing the world into digital, non-digital, new, old, online, offline...it's pointless. The digital-non-digital mindset should have died with the first dotcom bust. Today, we are all doing digital things - sending email, on facebook, on twitter...yet, when we go into the office and have to make buying decisions, we think differently.

Selling Digital Media: Anurag Batra was of the opinion that we aren't seeing sufficient innovation around advertising in digital media because most sales execs come from a background of print, where innovation was less. Some of the questions put forward as the moderator of this session - on the adoption of ad networks, what went wrong with social media in India, reputation management on the Web and why blogging hasn't picked up in India remained unanswered.

P.s.: Great to have conferences without company pitches on panels (apart from the Polycon bit), and a conference with a strong editorial driven discussion...it certainly wasn't one of those "been there, heard that" events. More of these, please...And before I forget - we were also updating live on Twitter - me from the New Media Congress in Delhi, and Cerius from an apparently drab Web Innovation Summit in Mumbai. Here's ContentSutra on Twitter.

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@NDTV NMC: Old Media Evolves With Consumers; Regulation Biggest Bottleneck; Who's The Consumer?

Nikhil Pahwa — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:11:06 -0500

For some reason, at the NDTV New Media Congress, the session focusing on mass media companies taking to the Internet digressed down the New Media vs Old Media path. Kevin Obi, SVP (Digital Assets) for NBCU International seemed rather annoyed at the "ridiculous" distinction between new media and old media, saying that latter evolves with its consumers, and the two domains do not compete, but co-operate. He spoke of Hulu, calling it the number one destination in the US for premium content (from a commercial point of view), saying that NBCU has created a destination site,and are reaching out into the marketplace and partnering with other content providers. In a way, this was also a response to my question, about how business models will change for mass media companies as they move on to the Internet, and will have to compete for attention with multiple, global, content providers; the issue is - there can be an infinite number of destination sites as well.

An answer to this question also came from Viren Popli, SVP & Head of Mobile for STAR India, who said that local content providers are competing with content providers around the world anyway - they bring what is local, and what works for an audience. During his presentation, Popli also mentioned that content creation is becoming more expensive - cost of sets, talent etc is going up, while it's also becoming cheaper with mobile phone cameras and digicams. Another bugbear - technology is changing very fast, and multiple delivery platforms are evolving - cable, digital cable, DTH, IPTV, Internet and mobile Streaming etc. Business is becoming more scattered - today, having an office in every state capital is not enough. And too much is dependent on advertising - Everyone expects advertisers to fund the future. However, the biggest bottleneck is regulation: every day there are new regulations, and they are not keeping pace with technology. 3G and Mobile TV haven't happened in India because of regulation.

Another issue that Popli mentioned was with programming and delivering content for consumers in India: multiple generations reside in the same household, with distinctly different preferences and most often, there's a single user device in the house; at the same time, preferences vary across rural india, class 2 towns, class 1 towns and metros. One suggestion that he gave: opportunity lies not in creating a YouTube for India, but creating a light version so Indian consumers don't have to wait for the video to load.

Tarun Katial, COO of Big FM sees new media as a new broadcast platform; he mentioned that mass media companies will at monetizing the space with pre and post roll advertising; it's not as much about moving to a new medium, but about monetizing more than one media. During the Q&A, he mentioned that there's a saturation of televoting right now, and new ways of monetizing TV on mobile will have to be developed. The session was moderated by Vir Sanghvi, Advisory Editorial Director for HT Media, who concluded as follows: convergence is a reality, people who never had access now have access; the internet makes everyones voice heard. The notion that because you can produce cheap content, entertainment is going to be cheap is not accurate. For example - Hollywood studios have started making money from new streams, and at the same time, the budget for films has gone up.

@NDTV NMC: TV On TCP/IP; Leapfrog To 4G; Nearly Good Enough Quality On Video; Companies In Flux

Nikhil Pahwa — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:45:58 -0500

A thought-provoking comment from Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman and CEO of Rediff at the NDTV New Media Congress, yesterday - "underpinning the whole convergence argument is that the TCP/IP protocol needs to become common over TV. When all three channels, Internet, Mobile and TV, offer TCP/IP, it will allow a return loop, and you'll realise that people can talk back. The moment you enter this phase, you enter a free world. At the same time, the pipe people (telcos) will want to become media companies - AOL (NYSE: TWX) tried it. In India, mobile companies have that ambition as well. It's a great challenge for business models."

Rajesh Sawhney, President of Reliance Entertainment mentioned that content is lagging behind in funding in India: there is development on the access device front - we have devices from $10 to $1000, but telcos who are investing in infrastructure, are investing in 3G, not 4G. The content and infrastructure problems should have been sorted out two years ago, but lack of investment there is holding us back. He also felt that an opportunity was wasted because public telcos did not open the last mile, and did not have aggresive broadband plans - 10 million lines were wasted. However, Sawhney doesn't harbour a pessimistic view of broadband - if not in 2009, then in 2010. (Ed: The word "Hope" comes to mind) He did emphasise the need to leapfrog to 4G, and that like in the case of TV, Hindi and regional languages are key to the spread of the Internet.

It was Sawhneys comment on tackling piracy - of firstly reducing the time between Theater and DVD release of movies, and more specifically, of creating a social stigma around piracy, that elicited a response from Balakrishnan, who mentioned how the initial US constitution initially provided copyright only for 11 years, and was later pushed up to 75 years because of lobbying by Disney (NYSE: DIS) executives. (Ed: There's been talk of it being pushed up to 95 years in India). Balakrishnan advocated a more social approach to monetizing content - ask someone to pay for it if they like it, or take it free with advertisements. He made some very interesting points around video content as well - "Like all things disruptive, something that is nearly as good is good enough." Resolution levels of video contnet may be poor online (and not HD), but you have an enormous number of people consuming it. as an example, initial studies predicted that US corporates wouldn't adopt cell phones because the quality of reception wasn't good enough, while in the Scandinavian countries, they had no choice but to adopt wireless. "Laggard adopters will die a natural death."

Kevin Bertram, CEO of Distributive Networks felt that business models keep changing at a great pace - they sold polyphonic ringtones a few years ago at $2.99, and not iTunes offers full tracks for $0.99. It forces smaller companies to be nimble. He did feel that operators in India are quicker to pick up changing trends. During his presentation, Bertram presented a case study of the work they did for the Obama campaign - they used text alerts for breaking news, campaign updates, and calls to action - supporters were informed about which channel and at what time a speech would be broadcast, and this helped create greater connects. An ad during the Superbowl got text responses in "six figures". The campaign also offered content downloads, ringtones and wallpapers, and used twitter and some text responses to the campaign on blogs.

"It's a mad space to be in", said Pankaj Sethi, President VAS & Enterprise Market Planning for Tata Teleservices, "We hold the distribution route to the customer, but our partnerships, our adversaries, our companies and our roles are evolving very fast. We need to look at off-portal content and embrace social media." For the operators, while networks and media are converging, lots is diverging as well, particularly in terms of content choices and the micro-segmentation of interests.

The panel was moderated by Sanjay Trehan, CEO of NDTV Convergence.

Shine.com Goes Live: Job Matching, Career Advice, Industry Insights

Nikhil Pahwa — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:09:05 -0500

Frankly, the part that interested me most about Shine.com, HT Media's new job portal, was the integration of content. There are two segments, Industries & Companies and Career Advice, which have industry inputs:
-- Career Advice features articles from Pervin Malhotra, Amita Virmani and Mahesh Murthy , as well as a poll, and.... Dilbert!
-- Industry Insights gives users access to data of over 600 companies, and features profiles of "Industry Stalwarts". Shine is clearly making use of its media connection - the business news section is powered by sister concern Livemint.com.

Jobs, searchable and segmented by Industry, are also listed in three levels (different levels of payment?) - Priority Results, Job Results and Features Opportunities. The advanced search is fairly comprehensive (screencap, link). Importantly, the moment you log in, the site displays jobs which match your specifications, based on your profile - Job Matching. On the whole, the interface and design is clean, but I did find a few issues: after I logged in, the sign-in form remained, thus giving me the impression that I hadn't been logged in. I tried the site both with Firefox and IE, and the profile page was completely out of whack with Firefox (screencap). I'm not sure of how much time an average user spends on a job site, but my session did time out. I tried to edit my profile details, and some modifications were accepted, while others were not. The site is in beta.

Fri, 09 May 2008 09:00:00 -0500

SlideShare Gets $3 Million For Presentation Docs Hosting

Robert Andrews — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:43:12 -0500

Powerpoint presentation sharer SlideShare has raised a $3 million first-round investment. David Siminoff, a partner with lead investor Venrock, is joining a board that includes Guy Kawasaki, Marc Cuban, Ross Mayfield and Saul Klein. With bases in San Francisco and New Delhi, the company claims over 300,000 presentations have been added since its 2007 launch and, rather optimistically, aims to host "every presentation in the world". SlideShare offers document embedding, includes social features like "most viewed" and also supports PDF and OpenOffice docs. But it's competing variously with the likes of Scribd, Slide, SplashCast, Preezo, SlideBoom, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Docs and tools like iSpring. It said the funds would grow its San Francisco office and aide product development. Release.

Nikhil adds: The team has a consulting practice (Uzanto Consulting), the revenues from which were being used to fund Slideshare. In that context, I asked Amit Ranjan, COO of Slideshare, on why they decided to go in for funding: Ranjan said the company has decided to consciously focus more on growing Slideshare...it's a bigger bet in the long run. They're going to increase their team in the US, have a business development team in place for monetization. Some part of the money will go into better server infrastructure - till the time you are bootstrapped, you do have financial constraints, he says. The company currently has 12 people in India and will be hiring more. In the next few months, they'll be looking to strike deals with other companies for whom presentation software is just a part of the overall plan - like in case of Zoho and Google Docs. "What we're doing overlaps what they're doing, and it will be great if they could serve slides" says Ranjan.

Monetization? "It will be a lead generation kind of advertising model - presentations are an excellent way of marketing your idea". Slideshare was planning to roll out Pro features that users can subscribe to and pay for. Ranjan says they will roll out some pro features 4-5 months down the line, but it's something they have to take a call on - whether to segregate their users into regular and pro users. Every time they launch a feature, they're tempted to make it available to everyone. What about the exit? Ranjan says they've got 5-6 million unique visitors since launch, and they've raised money at a fairly late stage. They believe they can build a standalone business. For the investors - typically, investors have a 4-5 year timeframe, so nothing fixed there yet either. He says they went ahead with Venrock because they had similar beliefs - that Slideshare can be developed into a marketplace for ideas.

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@NDTV NMC: Advertising Isn't Infinite; Free Content Model May Not Last - Andrew Paulson, LiveJournal

Nikhil Pahwa — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:11:12 -0500

Andrew Paulson, President, SUP (Livejournal): "advertising is great, but not a renewable resource - it's not infinite. Everyone seemed to think that a social network will solve everyones problems. I've met a lot of people from TV and other media in India, and everyone says yes, yes, social media, but unless you're really in it, I don't think you really don't know what you're dealing with. We don't really know what people on social networks are doing, and many times we don't even want to know. In Russia we have to worry about neo-nazi propaganda, but not in the US, in the US, we have to worry about pedophilia.

What differentiates social networks is the way the community decides to use it. MySpace is about showing off, facebook is not about content, but about finding people you know, and making friends with friends-of-friends. In the same way that there are different kinds of magazines and newspapers, there are different kinds of social networks. Social networks can just take off on their own - Google (NSDQ: GOOG) didn't do anything to make Orkut successful in India and Brazil, and Friendster did nothing to make a success in Indonesia, but it happened and it spread. Livejournal is about arguments and about community. This is a platform which allows people to create content and share with friends and friends-of-friends. People who come on to Livejournal are interested in finding people who have the same interests.

We have an agreement with media organizations - in Russia, with BBC, NYT. NYT wrote a controversial article on Russia, and posted a translated version on the NYT community on LiveJournal, and allowed users to respond. There were thousands of responses, which the NYT translated back into English and then published them."

One interesting warning from Paulson: "The CFOs of media companies right now allow content on the website to be put up for free, but in time, as other revenue streams (particularly print advertising) dry up, they will look at the websites in a completely different manner, and the readers might have to pay for content online."

@ NDTV New Media Congress and Web Innovation Summit Today

Nikhil Pahwa — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:45:19 -0500

I'm rushing for the NDTV New Media Congress in Delhi now, and Cerius will be attending the Web Innovation Summit in Mumbai. Connectivity permitting, we'll have live updates here, as well as quick updates via mobile at the ContentSutra on twitter.

In case you'd like to meet up on the sidelines of the conference, I'm at nikhil AT contentsutra DOT com and Cerius is at cerius AT contentsutra DOT com

Yahoo India Adds Content To Search Results With Glue Page

Nikhil Pahwa — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:50:04 -0500

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has unveiled a new search-related product in India called "Glue Page". A Glue page adds context to search results with a mashup of content from multiple sources - Wikipedia, YouTube, HolidayIQ, TrainEnquiry, and some Yahoo sites - Answers, Local, Flickr and Images. It's like Wikipedia, and then some more.

This feature doesn't appear to have been enabled for other geographies (screenshot), and maybe is being tested in India. The search results appear to work for specific queries - like Iron Man, Mumbai, Harbhajan Singh, and not for generic queries like "Restaurant in Delhi" or even "Harbhajan Singh Sreesanth". It'll be interesting to find out what percentage of Yahoo Searches from India are focused on celebrities. The Glue Page feature is still in beta, and while Frasier throws up a Glue Page result, Sex and the city does not. Another issue - with the content from the Glue Page displayed, the actual search results are relegated to just 1/4th of the page. However, one can click on a tab to access the classic search results.

There appears to be a trend of Yahoo India launching mashups - with OurCity and Local. This, I think, is their best and probably the most important implementation of mashups yet. Yahoo is expected to announce the launch of Glue Page later today.

Update: I met Gopal Krishna, Head of Audience for Yahoo India in Delhi today, and he mentioned that Glue Page is more than a mashup - they offer dynamic pages in response to user queries, and not pre-defined results. Also, Yahoo is going to offer related queries depending on the recent context. For example: If a user searches for "Nano" right now, the search delivers a Glue Page around the iPod Nano. However, around the time the Tata Nano is launched, the context will be different, and they'll deliver a Glue Page around the car, with the iPod Nano as a related result.

HDFC Bank Ties Up With ngpay For Mobile Banking

Nikhil Pahwa — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:36:21 -0500

HDFC Bank has finally thrown its hat into the mobile money transfer ring - the company has tied up with NGPay, the mobile payment solution from Jigrahak , reports ET. HDFC is offering a full suite of services including access to bank accounts, shopping, ticketing and payments. The service is application based, and the bank is also offering money transfer between bank accounts. Strangely enough, the ngpay site wasn't loading on my MTNL connection.

Prior to HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Barclays Bank have launched mobile banking services. In related news, the Reserve Bank of India is set to release draft guidelines for mobile banking by the 15th of June, focusing primarily on safety and interoperability issues for mobile banking services.

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Burrp Had Received Angel Funding From Network18 Group CEO Haresh Chawla

Nikhil Pahwa — Wed, 07 May 2008 04:10:13 -0500

There's a rumour doing the rounds that Web18 has invested in social media startup Burrp.com. We've confirmed from official Network18 sources that this is not true. However, we should have probably written about this earlier - Haresh Chawla, the Group CEO of Network18 (of which Web18 is a part) had provided angel investment to Burrp. We've confirmed this from our sources, and this is a fairly well known fact in Mumbai circles as well. This is just for the record. We also contacted Deap Ubhi, Founder and CEO of Burrp, who has declined to comment.

Burrp provides local information and user generated reviews of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, cafés etc; has TV listings and alerts, and a user created lifestyle focused zine called Blah.

New Horizon Media Raises Second Round Of Funding From Beacon India

Nikhil Pahwa — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:07:20 -0500

Indian language publisher New Horizon Media has raised a second round of funding, led by Beacon India Private Equity. This round also saw investment from existing promoters and Emergic Venture Capital, which had invested in the company in 2006. Deepak Shahdadpuri, Managing Director of Beacon India, has joined the NHM board. Beacon is a $200 million PE fund sponsored by Baer Capital Partners. This is their fifth investment in India, but the amount of funding has not been disclosed. NHM is founded by Badri Seshadri and K. Satyanarayan, who were co-founders of Cricinfo.com (bought by Wisden in 2003) and R. Ananthkumar.

NHM is a multilanguage, multi-format publisher of printed books, audio books and DVDs. Headquartered in Chennai, the company has retailed its audio books online at Audible, priced between $10-12 each. K Satyanarayan told me that the company doesn't see any reliable online or mobile revenue models for the books yet, but is prepared for them: they're creating content in a manner that it is portable across formats. Satyanarayan mentioned issues with consumption of text-based content on the mobile. The company has also begun retailing digital audio content - short stories priced between Rs. 5-10 - with kiosk company ADDkiosk. NHM intends to use the funding for increasing distribution, particularly in English.

YouTube India Goes Live

Nikhil Pahwa — Wed, 07 May 2008 03:52:35 -0500

I just checked, and Youtube India has gone live today, with a host of Indian content partners - NDTV, UTVi, Bindass, Zoom and Indiaglitz are broadcast partners, content from Rajshri Media, and music related content from Music Today (part of the India Today group) and PhatPhish Records. There's sports related content from KrishCricket as well, and educational videos from NPTEL (IIT and IIS JV) and IGNOU. A few non-profit partners as well. Strangely, I didn't find Eros among YouTube India's partners...We'd reported earlier that that YouTube India was supposed to launch today.

Much of this content was already up on YouTube, and many of these partnerships have been signed over the past year. This is just a case of segmentation. But how will this segmentation help? YouTube ~~is redirecting~~ detects which part of the world users are coming and serves them the videos being watched by users from the same location; the promoted videos are Indian, but the featured videos are international. An India focused site will help the company market it to Indian advertisers, and get more Indian content providers on board.

Here's a funny video on the YouTube India launch, being promoted on the companys international site. They've also launched a YouTube India blog, announcing the launch here.

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Updated: India To Be Hub Of BBC World News' South Asia Ops; Content Deal With Six Telcos

Nikhil Pahwa — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:05:42 -0500

Update: India will be the hub of the BBCs South Asian Marketing, Communications and Audience Insight activity, reports Exchange4media. Vaishali Sharma has been promoted as Head of Marcomms, BBC Global News, South Asia, while Dezma De Melo will be Head of Audience Insight. Interestingly, the BBC claims that their website receives 1 million visitors from India each month. More here. Indiantelevision.com reports that BBC World News has inked mobile content deals with BPL, MTNL, Airtel, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), Spice Telecom and Idea Cellular. The content is being tested with three service providers at present - Airtel, MTNL and Spice Telecom.

(Original story) BBC World has inked content distribution deals with six mobile operators in India, reports PTI. There are plans to offer video news clips on the mobile soon, and there are no plans for an India-specific English site yet. The story doesn't mention which operators the Beeb has signed up with, what kind of content is currently being distributed, so we're trying to get more on this.

At present, the BBC has content sites in Hindi and Urdu; last year, the company was looking for an editor for the Urdu portal. They've mentioned that they're looking at new media opportunities in India, and are providing content to video portal Rajshri.com.

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Hindu Business Line Tries Podcasts And Mobile Version

Nikhil Pahwa — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:16:19 -0500

Looks like the Hindu Business Line quietly rolled out some new features recently - a mobile site and podcasts. On April 25th, the first podcast went up on their site - a weekly business news roundup hosted on a Wordpress blog. This certainly is a poor attempt at a podcasts section; for a big media house, I would have expected some investment in design and development. There's a lack of design integration with the main Hindu Business Line website (just a podpress theme with a masthead doesn't cut it). Often there's a context to stories and interviews that doesn't make it to print (and in case of newspaper websites - to the sites). I'd prefer that the podcasts be integrated with existing stories as an additional perspective, or a separate story altogether (a web-exclusive, maybe). In that context, the podcasts are far too short - most are less than two minutes long; one thing I did like - some of the audio content is in a local language - in Tamil.

Amusingly, the mobile version of the Hindu Businessline is a collection of links to the printer-friendly pages of the main content on the site; the assumption is that if the page is light, it should work for the mobile; that's not entirely true: I tried it on the mobile, and the pages have horizontal scrolling, and the content is just as wordy (and lengthly) in the mobile version as it is in the online version...too much scrolling. While on business news sites: I like what Mint has done with its blogs - OneWaYTicket, in particular. Still feel, though, that content discovery and frequency of updates on Mint blogs is a bit of an issue.

Vodafone To Launch iPhone In India This Year

Cerius Shah — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:14:09 -0500

So, we eat humble pie. Vodafone confirms a month old Business Standard story, it will launch the iPhone in India along with Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey, later this year. What will be the price? According to the BS story, the 8GB was slated to cost Rs 27 - 28k. Assuming custom duties on cellphones is 5%, at the current retail price in the US of Rs 16k (8GB) and Rs 20k (16GB), a very conservative estimate taking into account allied taxes and duties should be around Rs 21k (8GB) and around 25k (16GB), which would be needed to put it on par with the current rates in the greymarket.

However, what value does an official release add? The most attractive feature of the iPhone is the ability to add third party applications, the variety and functionality of which is what makes it great as a platform. Having used the vanilla 16GB version without any applications, I can attest to it being a rather boring piece of gadgetry without the added third party functionality.Lastly, I doubt landing costs will permit it to debut at a price south of Rs 21k for the 8GB version, which means Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) will have to use some of its $2 billion Indian warchest to subsidize it. If it does, it will go on to lock people into draconian plans to prevent them from defecting, and we all know how that will work out. Hint: Tons of people applying for cell phone insurance to claim loss. Regardless, the iPhone, in its vanilla operator locked form, is a crippled piece of great hardware, one whose true value can only be unlocked. Pun intended.

As an aside, in the past two months, through my iPhone, I have detected over 300 wifi spots in the Bombay suburbian area within a 13km range. While over 80% of these are protected, it would be interesting to explore the potential of creating a wifi-mesh. The iPhone has a Wifi spot chronicler that points spots on a Google (NSDQ: GOOG) map mashup, if anyone out there is doing the same, drop in a line in the comments.

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Reliance Entertainment's Content Acquisition; Zapak Plans Merchandise, 500 Gameplexes

Nikhil Pahwa — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:22:26 -0500

An interesting insight from Kamal Gianchandani, COO of BigFlicks on content acquisition by the Reliance Entertainment. Gianchandani tells Indiantelevision.com in an interview that Reliance Entertainment has a central acquisition team, which acquires films for all platforms, keeping in mind the interests of all departments; however, if the rights are sold separately, then the departments acquire them directly from the film producer. I don't remember any instances of rights for the same film being exploited by all of the groups departments. There are synergies with other departments as well - TV content from BIG TV for video on demand (VoD); they can bundle content with Reliance Energy. T

The company will be offering content that can be transferred to the mobile, and add community features as well. Some book-keeping updates: BigFlicks claims to have a content library of 1000 films, thousands of hours of TV content, 15000 titles for rental. Apparently they've done lakhs of streams. On the offline retail front, they have 50 stores and are targeting 200 stores by the end of the year. Lots more in the interview here.

Zapak is also planning to launch merchandise around its games - bags, apparel, wristbands, mugs, headphones etc, reports Business Standard. COO Rohit Sharma has said the company expects as high as 25 percent of turnover to come from the segment. By when? The company is in talks with McDonalds, Cadbury, Domino's and other companies. Zapak had earlier done a promo with Domino's. The company is also targeting 500 gameplexes by 2009.

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Bharti Airtel Bids $22 Per Share For South African Telco MTN: Report

Nikhil Pahwa — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:36:06 -0500

A note was sent out by Bharti Airtel PR last night, stating that "Bharti Airtel Limited has entered into an exploratory discussion with MTN Group Limited, South Africa. Current discussions are still at an early stage, are exploratory in nature and may or may not lead to any transaction." MTN and Bharti shareholder Singtel have issued a similar statements.

The bid: Airtel has bid for 51 percent stake in MTN, valuing the company at $37 billion. The company is willing to pay 165 rand (around $22) per share, and has secured $12 billion from banks to finance the deal. MTN is reportedly looking for 180 rand (around $24) per share. [Financial Times, via Reuters]
Valuation: The Airtel bid values MTN at $37 billion. As per a statement from MTN to the JSE, it was valued at around $41 billion, almost as much as Bharti Airtel, at $44 billion.
Shareholders: the largest shareholder is the Alpine Trust, comprising of MTN management and staff and a private family, holds 23 percent in MTN, the South African Government Pension Fund holds 13.5 percent stake. [CNBC]
Competition: Others are also looking to acquire MTN - there is another Indian major - Reliance Communications - as well as Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) and China Mobile.
Advisors: As per reports Airtel is being advised by Standard Chartered, Singtel by Goldman Sachs. Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank are advising MTN. [CNBC]
Initially denied: The statements come a week after the Airtel's CFO and Joint MD Akhil Gupta had denied any such acquisition plans.

Airtel already has a license to operate in Sri Lanka, and operations in Seychelles, the islands of Jersey and Guernsey. The Sri Lankan operations are set to begin this year. Anyway, here's an advert from from MTN that ends with "go start something". Bharti Airtel is certainly trying to:

Update: Airtel corp comm head Senjam Raj Sekhar has declined to comment on the details of the acquisition bid.

TRAI Issues Consultation Paper On MVNOs In India

Nikhil Pahwa — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:08:10 -0500

Just noticed this on the TRAI website: the regulator has issued a consultation paper for Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) in India.

You may download the paper here.

We'll have updates from the paper soon. Among the issues that the TRAI is looking to put up for discussion: the definition of MVNO, whether there is a need to introduce MVNOs in India, the regulatory model, eligibility criteria for MVNO, service obligations, commercial framework, entry fee, consumer issues in case of a dispute between an MVNO and MNO, M&A guidelines, among others. This will be an interesting open-house discussion, if the TRAI does constitute it.

Updates on the report from Cerius Shah:

Definition: TRAI has defined an "MVNO licensee as an entity that does not have assignment of spectrum for Access Services (2G/3G/BWA) but can provide wireless (mobile) Access Services to customers by sharing the spectrum of the Access Provider (UAS/ CMTS licensee)".

First thing, The TRAI definition offers no comment on the development or sharing criteria of the Access Provider's infrastructure, limiting itself only to spectrum (more on that below). The paper's case for introduction of MVNO's in India is critical but optimistic. The current state of the Indian telco market is one that is driven by subscriber base rather than ARPU. In a spectrum starved state, allowing MVNO's, who rely on product differentiation through focus on VAS and niche's, may go against the stated objective of reaching a 50% teledensity by 2010. With an average of 8 million subscribers being added month-on-month, the current service differentiator is price, even in the case of stealth MVNO, Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM). Another key point raised is that of Significant Market Power, where a mobile operator with an already established presence, could exercise a price squeeze by acquiring MVNO licenses. While no comment has been made on the licensing structure, one can expect the only barrier to entry being a large quantum of an entry fee to discourage non serious players and little or no roll out obligations. While the regulatory framework, FDI limits and annual license fee proposed for consultation are open-ended, one can expect them to be a sub-set of what is currently prescribed for UASL holders.

Is the telco market ripe for an MVNO? CDMA has had a terrible time with VAS as a component of ARPU, which decreased from 11.5 percent to 7.5 percent, the same metric for GSM saw a decrease from 8.8% to 8.2% QoQ as per December 2007 performance indicators. Looking at the current state, an MVNO model seems beneficial to an incumbent operator. While Airtel, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) as well as Reliance's GSM arm will look to further scale as well as block spectrum (related to subscriber base) recent license holder awaiting spectrum could use the help of an MVNO to lend support in active infrastructure, branding as well as service differentiation. Press release here.

Zapak, Jump To Launch Cricket Game Based On Ishant Sharma

Cerius Shah — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:48:51 -0500

Reliance Entertainment owned Zapak and Jump games continue their licensing streak. Both gaming divisions of ADAG will develop an online and mobile game respectively, based on cricketer Ishant Sharma. The mobile game, titled 'Cricket Fever', will feature different forms of deliveries, with the player trying to bowl the batsmen out. The online version, titled 'Power Bowler' features a similar set of gameplay mechanics, except an insignificant difference in number of overs. The release quotes Rohit Sharma, COO, Zapak, stating the gaming portal has over 18 cricket games and more than 80,000 users playing them everyday. Considering his statement that all the games are equally popular, that's an average 4,444 users playing each game daily on average.

This is Jump's second indigenous sport-star license acquisition, they have previously developed two games based on Indian footballer, Biachung Bhutia. ADAG recently acquired rights to develop six mobile games for Manchester United for 2008 for a reported $100 million, with the first title expected to be released in April. ADAG seems to be going the EA way, it has also licensed rights for Bollywood celebrities including Bipasha Basu, Malika Arora, Sameera Reddy and even, hold your breath, Shaan. Do big ticket names help offset gameplay? I seriously doubt a 2d sprite can compensate for lack of gameplay unless they manage to map player characteristics (ala Pro Evolution Soccer). Updates awaited on mobile game pricing.

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One97 Communications To Close $25 Million In Funding

Nikhil Pahwa — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:47:51 -0500

Mobile Value Added Services company One97 Communications is in the process of raising $25 million in Series B funding, the company has confirmed to contentSutra. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and MD of One97 Communications said that the company will close the funding shortly, ~~and has signed term sheets~~; existing investors are willing to put in more funds than the pro rata requirement. The company will use the funding for going global - China is among the markets they're eying - and will also set aside money for acquisitions and incubation. This year One97 plans to roll out new services, broaden the existing product portfolio with investment in infrastructure, R&D and with inorganic growth.

The company is fairly bullish: Sharma told contentSutra that they've seen 6 times growth in month-on-month revenues over the last fiscal. One97 Communications claims to be the largest voice platform in the country handling a billion calls, half a billion SMS and WAP, and 140 million unique users on their platform. One97 had raised a Series A funding of around $10 million from SAIF Partners and Silicon Valley Bank. Sharma had founded One97 in 2000. Other significant players in the VAS space are OnMobile Global (a public listed entity) Bharti Telesoft (part of the Bharti Airtel group), Cellebrum (part of the Spice Mobile group) and IMI Mobile.

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