UTV draws up big plans for broadband

NEW DELHI: Making a focused move on broadband content, UTV has launched a

separate company UTVi with a fresh round of funding from Indus Venture Fund

(IVF). UTVi has been valued at $25 million, of which IVF has contributed $2

million to hold an eight per cent stake. The company will focus on providing

broadband content for its portal, sharkstream.com, as well as launching a number

of portals in Indian languages. According to UTV CEO Biren Ghose, presently 60

per cent of Internet interaction takes place in English and less than one per

cent in Indian languages. UTV aims to bridge this gap on the Internet. To

achieve this, the company plans to launch a slew of portals in Indian languages.

It has launched tamizha-tamizha.com in Tamil and khemcho.com in Gujarati. It had

also launched sharkstream.com in Singapore in collaboration with the government

of Singapore, providing content to viewers in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong,

Korea, China and Taiwan. Sharkstream.com was re-launched in India recently with

an impressive array of tie-ups with Star TV, Channel V, Hallmark, SingTel Magix

and Vijay TV.

The major reason behind the re-launch in India is to gain more mind share.

With the Internet coming of age in India and with broadband access poised for a

take off, UTV is hoping to gain visibility and attract more tie-ups from content

providers.

Pentamedia, another recent entrant into this segment, has launched its

entertainment portal, numtv.com, which will provide access to 10 TV channels on

the Net. Since the Indian infrastructure cannot support such access, the portal

is currently targeted at the NRI audience. Numtv is fast lapping up tie-ups with

as many TV channels as possible so that it will have a huge appeal. It is also

important to build up the brand image so that when the pipes in India are ready

to deliver multimedia applications, these players would have already won the

race for mind share.

UTV has another interesting initiative with US-based Homeland Networks

through which two portals, radioofindia.com and tvofindia.com will be made

available. Homelands will provide access to 10 radio channels which will all be

accessible to those logging into radioofindia.com. These radio channels will be

interactive and also provide music on request.

Ghosh says, "We are aiming to become No.1 in the digital contents race.

We have more than 5,000 hours of proprietary entertainment software, out of

which a few hundred hours are already digitized. Tell me one company which has

such a huge backup of software?" Ghosh says that his company is open to the

idea of selling its digital entertainment software and shall even undertake

specific orders. Although he is optimistic about the broadband scene in India,

he believes it will take time to pick up, especially the pay channels, which

call for high quality delivery. As for now, sharkstream can be accessed in some

parts of Mumbai. Sharkstream with very jerky movements, that is. That's the

scenario in India as of now.

There is no doubt that companies like UTV and Pentamedia are gearing up for

the big times in broadband. But it is really dependent on the availability of

bandwidth. Till now, we have only heard of players like SpectraNet in Delhi,

BSES, the Rahejas and the Hindujas in Mumbai wiring up the states. Yet, none of

the ventures are operational yet. SpectraNet did announce amidst much fanfair

that it would be operational by April but the project has been delayed due to

some "unavoidable circumstances", according to sources.

Broadband as a phenomenon, when it happens will bring about mind-boggling

changes in lifestyles. And with the utility companies in India joining in the

telecom bandwagon, the change is inevitable. The question now is, how soon? Till

then, broadband content providers can utilize their precious time to build on

their content and work on creating mind share in the Indian and foreign markets.