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Follow UsBANGALORE: Consumer Internet portal indya.com, recently acquired by Rupert
Murdoch's STAR Network, said on Wednesday it was cutting 95 jobs or nearly 80
per cent of its staff, as it struggled to cut losses.
Chief Executive Officer Sunil Lulla, who is also leaving, told Reuters that
the job cuts came with a reorganization of the portal, which made a splashy
debut early last year with full-page advertisements and high-profile funding.
"Seeing the market conditions for the sector, STAR has chosen to
re-model the business largely to cater to its own interests of television and
the Internet business," Lulla said. This leaves the Bangalore-based portal
with about 25 staff. STAR Television, owned by Murdoch's News Corp. Ltd., leads
prime-time ratings in India's satellite television market.
The latest job cuts in indya.com spell more gloom for an already-battered
industry and follows the layoff of about 100 people in the portal in the last
five months. STAR earlier this year hiked its stake in indya.com to nearly 100
per cent from the 37 per cent it had acquired last year.
"It does not seem likely that in the near-term future there will be an
optimistic scenario for the Internet industry in India," Lulla said. STAR,
through indya.com, had planned to unveil a combined Internet and television
strategy for advertisers in the cable television market.
indya.com, a brain-child of the closely-held Microland group, targets the
15-30 age group through its 35 channels on its portal and plans to build several
services offered or negotiated over the Internet. It faces competition from
home-grown portals like Rediff.com and sify.com owned by India's Satyam Infoway
besides Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, all of which have Indian versions of their
sites and aim to expand.
Lycos Asia, one of the region's largest Internet networks said earlier this
month that it was closing its Indian operations as part of an Asian revamp, but
its portal for the country would stay open.