ITV’s Granada To Seek IPTV And Mobile TV Opps In India

anada International has appointed Ting Wai Ho as Sr. Sales Executive for Granada International’s new Hong Kong office. Wong will be working with Granada International’s Regional Director-Asia James Ross on seeking opportunities in VOD and IPTV in India. Also among Wong’s priorities, are Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, Indiantelevision.com reports.
Granada International is a part of ITV Worldwide, and according to its website, it “distributes programmes to over 3,000 broadcasters and home entertainment partners in more than 200 countries worldwide”.
Of course, in case of IPTV in India, we will first have to wait for it to be launched; “Hopefully by October” says Peeyush Agrawal, GM (Broadband Services), MTNL. In case of Mobile TV, there will probably be a year long wait. Wong is likely to first look at Vietnam, where Nokia and VTC are set to launch Mobile TV by the end of the year.

DVD Rental Market Can Be As Much As $2.4 Billion By 2010″

atrix Partners India recently invested $7 million in Seventymm, an online DVD rental company based in Bangalore. Seventymm started its DVD rental service in Bangalore early this year while it has just kicked off its operations in Delhi. The company has so far received $10 million in venture capital with Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) putting in $2 million in the first round. Seventymm is founded by serial entrepreneur Raghav Kher and it has Eric Meyer, co-founder & former CIO of Netflix, as an advisor on the board. Rishi Navani, Founding Managing Director, Matrix Partners India, is joining the board of Seventymm as part of the investment.
I asked Navani why he invested in Seventymm. Navani thinks there is a huge market opportunity lying ahead. First the installed base of DVDs is expected to reach 50 million by 2010 from the current 13 million or so. An indication is that India already has 40 million VCD player base. So as the price of DVD players crash to Rs 1,200-1,500 level (from Rs 3,000 now), the penetration is expected to increase. Once the DVD installed base reaches this level, Navani thinks, it has to be supported by DVD rental service. Taking an average rental of $5 a month for 40 -50 million users, this gives a market opportunity of $200 million a month or $2.4 billion a year. Considering a market leader is the one who has 15-20 per cent market share, that’s a definitely a large market. Seventymm is the first mover in this space – at least the most visible first mover.
Online DVD rental has several advantages. For one, it’s scalable and you can cater to not 1,000 users or 10,000 users but a million users. You capture a metro market with a centralised warehousing and a few delivery boys, he says. But this can be a difficult thing to do in large cities like Delhi and Mumbai.
As for consumer choise, Navani says there are many other advantages – for instance, the DVD library can be as huge as 10,000 or 20,000 titles. Then you get to watch the original DVD not the pirated DVDs. You can keep the DVDs as along as you want (that’s what Seventymm does) – two DVDs at a time. Then you get to see the DVD you want without waiting for long like one does in a neighbourhood shop.
He, however, admits there are challenges too. For one, how easy is to get consumers sign up for the service? Since it’s online DVD rental, the internet penetration also has to grow at the same rate. Navani thinks that the DVD installed base and internet penetration would grow in tandem. Then there are going to be competing offers like DTH, IPTV and digital downloads which will be the real obstacle. So how many people would dish out $5 a month is something that remains to be seen. “It’s a consumer marketing business. Seventymm team is very experienced in consumer marketing,” says Navani. Now Raghav Kher and his team has a huge execution challenge ahead.

LINUS Capital Invests In Indian Social Networking Site

An Indian social networking site for cricket fans – Sixer – has received an undisclosed amount of investment from LINUS Capital, a boutique investment and advisory firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Hyderabad-based website, currently in beta, is expected to be launched before the ICC Champions Trophy 2006 games.
In a statement issued by LINUS Capital, Sunny Burra, Managing Director, said, “I am excited to invest in India’s first social networking start-up.” (Ed: I am not sure if it’s the first social networking site. Fropper is one, although focused on NRIs).
Sudheer Kumar, General Manager of ‘Sixer’, a Hyderabad based firm, says, “Our site will be an online hub for cricket fans with user-generated content, where a user can create content, share his profile and connect with others who love the game.”

US Indian Portal WahIndia Gets Angel Funding; To Set Up Office In Mumbai

WahIndia, a US-based online media and social networking company targeted at Indian community, has received an undisclosed amount of investment from some angel investors, the company informed in a press release. By the end of August 2006, WahIndia will be launching a social network focused on Bollywood and Indian entertainment. The US based company further plans to establish an office in Mumbai during next quarter to accelerate user growth in India, the release said.
Sunil Thakur, Founder and CEO of WahIndia, noted, “With the integration of a Bollywood-focused social network, we will further deepen relationship with our user community.” WahIndia plans to earn revenue from downloads of films, music, mobile ringtones, wallpapers, and other premium digital content.

Internet Portals Spent Rs 28.4 Crore On Offline Advertising In H12006

Here are some numbers on the advertising by internet portals in the first six months of this year. According to AdEx India, a division of TAM Media Research, online portals have spent Rs 13.7 crore ($3 million) on television advertising in just the first six months of 2006. This is almost equal to what they spent in the whole of 2005.
In print media, the total advertising spend by online portals reached Rs 14.7 crore in the first six months of 2006. Among the top ten advertisers in the first six months of the year is People Interactive, the owners of Shaadi.com and social networking and dating site Fropper.com. Devyani Nagpal, CMO, Travelguru.com, offers an explanation why portals are spending, “You can’t build a large consumer brand only on the internet. Big internet companies like Amazon have built their brands on TV. India is following the same trend. How do you get more people online? By addressing them through offline media.” [Ed: We don’t think MySpace and Google were brands built offline.]
Sachin Bhatia of MakeMyTrip, told The Brand Reporter, “The way Makemytrip looks at it, we use the internet to get immediate transactions, TV to build the brand, print to detail out our travel deals and outdoor as a reminder medium.”

TAaZzA.com!

Taazza.com is new initiative by arjun ram and arun ram.The brothers have attempted and succeeded(i believe) to create a news portal tht is efficient and use friendly and is equally competitive to the google news.Taaza.com is developed with the talk of the town technology rubyonrails.Arjun says some portals offer News aggregation(Google news), Meme tracking(Memorandum),news links(samachar.com), RSS feeds(almost all indian news portals).But here is Taazza.com with a whole lot of stuff from meme tracking, ‘insta’ news mash-up, location based news to ‘meme’ digging .Taazza also offers News Podcasts, Indian Blog tracking, Tea Kadai (News river) and APIs RSS & JSON.No portal is complete without a blog..so is here…FYI the london blasts were on the blogs before the news portals. As an info to the techies some of the components here are ajaxified.Beta version will be rolled on within 12 weeks time. So watch out for taazza.com note that its a ‘double z and not single z’

Fropper.com in a New Avataar

Mumbai, India, September 21, 2006 –(PR.COM)– Fropper Relationships continues to offer the clean dating platform, while the new addition Fropper Zones offers an additional social networking platform for people to connect and interact with friends, family and like-minded people!

Fropper Zones enables people to store & share photos, create blogs, form groups & connect with other people. All completely free! It is the first service to offer such interactive features for Indians globally.

On the launch of Fropper Zones, an elated Navin Mittal, Business Head, Fropper.com, said, “With the launch of Fropper Zones, we have given our users the ability to create & share their lives via the Internet. Up until now, Fropper.com has been regarded as a dating service but this launch moves us towards our vision of providing a platform that helps people form meaningful relationships.” Fropper Zones was a result of a survey that thousands of Fropper.com members undertook to express how they would like to use the Internet to connect with other people.

Photo sharing and personal zones are the two modules going live this week.

Fropper Zones will offer the following features:

    *Photo Sharing: You no longer have to mail bulky attachments of your holiday photos. Simply upload them through Fropper’s new photo sharing facility and invite your friends and family to visit your photo page.

Even better, you can set “Private and ‘Public’ setting to each photograph! Visitors to your page can add their comments about your photos and it’s a great way to connect and make new friends.

    *Member Dashboard: It’s a handy control panel for your activities on fropper Zones. Easily manage the rest of your activity, be it photos, blogs, groups, etc. It also carries as a short introduction about yourself with details such as interests, hobbies, personal slogan, favorites and more.

    *Invite Friends: One can invite friends, relatives or colleagues from different walks of life to view your ZONE and add their comments.

    *BLOG: Express yourself! Write or post personal views and thoughts, updates of daily life, political opinions, a great trip and favorite recipes… just about anything that interests you. Join an existing group that interests you and share their BLOG, place comments and more.

    *Groups: This is a great place where you can interact with like-minded people with common interests by email. You can join a pre-defined Group according to your interests or create your own Group.

    *Personalized web page: This is a your personal space on Fropper Zones. It is alternatively called ‘My Zone’. You can customize the look and feel of your Zone.

    *Events: This section will focus on the events posted by members region wise also will have events posted by the Fropper team. You can choose to participate in any of the existing events or create your own and invite friends.

All these new services make the new Fropper.com a must visit. Whether it is meeting new people and making new friends or sharing photos, you’ll find it here.

It’s exciting and opens up a whole new world. Log in and check out how Fropper Zones can expand your life through networking and building relationships.!

Fropper.com Promo!

Go,Yaar! Social networking site for Indians

NEW DELHI: The recently launched Go, Yaar! a social networking website for Indians worldwide, is a tool to connect and interact with friends, batch mates and colleagues online.
Go, Yaar! is unique among social networking websites in India that build directly on the communities that are already important to individuals: schools, universities and companies. Registering using a company e-mail address, automatically validates a user as a member of a company community. Alternatively, users can indicate their school and over 3,000 college affiliations in India, the US and Canada if they register using their personal e-mail addresses.

Once registered, a user can design a personalized profile, meet and interact with new members of their academic and company communities, invite friends to events and form groups. In addition, Go, Yaar! provides a set of highly flexible and fully integrated e-mail, video, photo album, blogging, instant messaging and peer-to-peer collaboration tools.

Phalgun Raju, founder and CEO, Go, Yaar! said, “With more than 40 million Internet users, India has just discovered the potential of social networking. There is a tremendous opportunity for Go, Yaar! to redefine the space and become India’s premier social networking destination given its focus on India and NRIs, its multitude of features, and its rapidly growing member base.”

It provides its members with customized privacy settings, which enable them to control who can view their content and an ever-evolving robust set of interactive tools to create and share information while building relationships.

“To continuously enhance our users’ experience, we are planning to adding key new features every month to the site,” said Raju.

The growth of 4.5 million new mobile phone subscribers per month across the country will be a key driver for Go, Yaar!’s growth as it plans to unveil mobile capabilities in the future.

Bid2w.in to power Idea’s revese bidding voice portal!

Bid2w.in, a service of Converge-i Wireless has entered into an exclusive partnership with Idea Cellular for powering Idea’s reverse bidding voice portal 456-025. With this Idea subscribers will be able to bid and win prizes ranging from motorcycles to consumer durables by dialling 456-025 and enterng the lowest unique bid.

Bid2w.in, a service of Converge-i(formerly TNGicube), has already launched the service for Idea celluar as well as Asianet satelite communications(using the SMS shortcode 66777) in partnership with Honda Motors last August , wherein the lowest unique bid will win a Honda shine 125 cc bike and received an overwhelming response from mobile users in kerala.