Updated: Pearson Invests $12.5Mn In TutorVista, JV With EduComp & Future Plans

Update: As a part of a $19 million third round of funding, Bangalore-based e-learning company TutorVista raised $6.5 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Manipal Group, apart from $12.5 million from the Pearson group, VCCircle reports. With this, the total from three rounds of funding since its incorporation in 2006 comes to $38 million. CEO K Ganesh told VCCircle that the company intends to use the money to expand to UK and Australia; they have around 10,000 students in all, 90% of which are from the US.

Original Story (June 25th 2009): Pearson, the media group behind Financial Times and publishing house Penguin, is showing an increased interest in India’s online education sector in the backdrop of an uncertain economy and weakened spending in North America’s K-12 publishing market.

It has acquired a 17.2% stake in TutorVista, a Bangalore based e-learning company, for $12.5 million, VCCircle reported. TutorVista recieved its first round of funding from Manipal Group, and its second from venture capitals Sequoia Capital India, Silicon Valley Bank and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Lightspeed contributed $7 million, while the other two contributed an additional $3.75 million.

TutorVista has 20,000 registered students and offers coaching using online whiteboards and voice over IP (VoIP) primarily to an USA audience. Pearson has plans to include TutorVista’s services to its bouquet of education services for students in North America, the UK and other parts of the world.

Vocational Training With EduComp

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Updated: The New Rediffmail: Minimalist & Mobile; Text Ads

Update: Rediff informs us that they haven’t abandoned Indic languages for email altogether - they intend to include Indian languages in the new user interface once some bugs have been fixed. The New Rediffmail is available for new registrants as of now, and Rediff also intends to make the new interface available to Rediffmail PRO users. In terms of giving users the option of adding RSS feeds, the company might include feeds from social networks like Orkut, LinkedIn, Facebook besides Rediff in the Feeds, but there’s no plan on making it a feed reader.

Original Story (July 1st 2009): NASDAQ listed Indian Internet company Rediff appears to be making a concerted effort to become mobile friendly: after redesigning its international portal India Abroad to make it mobile and iPhone friendly, the company has now revisited its mail service Rediffmail.

Where Have All The Text Ads Gone?
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Reports & Numbers

NDTV Convergence COO Salil Kumar Puts In His Papers

Salil Kumar, COO at NDTV Convergence, has put in his papers, MediaNama has learned. When contacted, Kumar declined to comment on the development. According to our sources, Kumar put in his papers a week to ten days ago. At NDTV Convergence, Kumar is believed to have been particularly responsible for chalking out the mobile strategy, given that he was with Bharti Airtel before joining NDTV Convergence. During his tenure, the company launched WAP portal NDTV Active and inked deals with Bharti Airtel for content on its VAS portal. The buzz is that Kumar may be joining MSN, where former NDTV CEO Sanjay Trehan had moved earlier this year.

Kumar had joined NDTV Convergence a year and 10 months ago from Bharti Airtel, where he was General Manager - Strategic Alliances and Business Development. Prior to joining Airtel, he was with Hungama as VP-Sales & Syndication, before which he was at HT Media Ltd.

Related:

– Exit Interview: Sanjay Trehan On His Two Years At NDTV Convergence

FY09: Adlabs Films Posts Rs.513.7M In Losses; Big Cinemas To Expand

Reliance ADAG group firm Adlabs Films owned Big Cinemas will be expanding into Netherlands and Nepal this year. During FY 2009, the theatre division has added 54 screens in India, 165 in US and 63 in Malaysia. It runs 201 in India. From 156 last year, it now has 438 screens and there have been reports of it eyeing troubled theatre house Pyramid Saimira’s US and Malaysia screens, but there has been no official announcement yet. More on Pyramid Saimira here.

All this expansion and investment has eaten into Adlabs’ profits, bringing consolidated net losses of Rs. 513.7 million over net sales of Rs. 6559.3 million, which has doubled from revenues of Rs. 3059.7 million in FY 08. Last year, Adlabs had generated profits of Rs. 474.7 million. The company said losses rose this year primarily due to its scaling up and high interest rates. Net interest expenses and financing charges was Rs. 636 million, up from Rs. 148.3 million. However, the previous financial period was 9 months, while this was for 12.

Expenses doubled to Rs. 7193 million in FY 09 from Rs. 3055.6 million last fiscal. EPS has dipped sharply from Rs. 11.28 to a negative Rs. 11.33 this year. EBITDA saw an 18% rise to Rs. 682.2 million.

Readers may remember that Adlabs divested Big FM and its network of 45 stations to Reliance Unicom, so the results have not been included in the financials.

Details: Release | Financials

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FY09: Saregama Reports Rs. 81.4 Million Loss; Music Biz Improves In Q4

As compared to the first quarter of the 2008-09 fiscal year, Music company Saregama India reported half the Net Sales and profitability plummeted to less than 1/10th of what it was in Q1. For the full year, though, the company reported a net loss of Rs. 81.4 million, as compared to a net profit of 82 million for the previous fiscal, while Net Sales declined from Rs. 907.2 million to Rs. 661.6 million. Revenues from license fees also declined from Rs 519.3 million in FY08 to Rs 426.9 million in FY09.

In terms of expenditure, the company has also reported a decline in Royalty costs - down from Rs. 285.5 million in FY08 to Rs. 146.1 million in FY09. Employee costs have increased, but both consumption of raw materials and advertising and sales promotion costs have declined.

On a standalone basis, Saregama India reported Net Sales of Rs. 140.9 million in Q4, and Net Profit of just Rs. 0.5 million for Q4. Profit for Saregama has been declining for the last four quarters, but on the bright side, revenue did recover in Q4, though much of the increase may be attributed to Other Operating Income.

Downloads: Financials

Music Business

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Facebook Usage In India Grows As Orkut Misses A Trick

Did Google owned Orkut miss a trick in India, by not partnering with more Indian companies? Inside Facebook reports, basing their findings from Facebook’s advertiser tools, that the social network saw a significant increase in the number of active users to almost 3.2 million over the last 60 days:

Source: Insidefacebook.com

Inside Facebook has reported a similar trend for Brazil, another country where Orkut is the dominant social network. We’ve noticed a significant increase in activity from Facebook in India over the last few months, which co-incides with the increase in the audience growth depicted in the chart. Key among them is (more…)

Roundup: Handset, DTH Taxes; Pyramid Saimira; Industry Moves; Oxigen; Bindass; FM Licenses;

Pyramid Saimira To Sell US And Malaysia Biz

Pyramid Saimira would now focuss on its business in India and has put up its business in the US and Malaysia for sale. It would also help in strengthening the financial condition of the parent company, said PSTL Managing Director P S Saminathan. In US the company has 21 screens, two radio stations, a banquet hall and a magazine, DesiPages, while in Malaysia the company mainly dealt with screening and distribution of Indian, Chinese, Malay and Hollywood films. (MSN)

Read our story on their financial results here.

Maharashtra Increases Taxes On Mobile Handsets

The Maharashtra government has increased the Value Added Tax on Mobile Handsets from 4% to 12.5%, following which handsets are expected to become more expensive all over Maharashtra. The increase in VAT is estimated to generate additional revenue of about Rs 3,000 crore per year. (Times Of India)

Ed: We think this is a backward step: lowering of taxes on handsets is what killed the once-flourishing grey market in India, and an increase in tax is only going to encourage proliferation.

The Gujarat government has announced an entertainment tax of Rs 200 a year on every DTH connection in the state, which is expectected to net the government an estimated 6 crore of additional revenue, since it has around 300,000 DTH connections. Gujarat already gets Rs. 8 crores as entertainment tax from Cable TV households. (The Hindu)

Durga Raghunath Joins WSJ; Sidin Vadukut Appointed Managing Editor, Livemint

Durga Raghunath has been appointed Editor, Mobile Services and Digital Product Development by The Wall Street Journal, India, reports ContentSutra. Her place, as Managing Editor for Livemint and Mint, has been taken by Sidin Vadukut (on Twitter). Vadukut was a staff writer at Mints supplement Lounge prior to this, and will report to Mint managing editor R. Sukumar, reports ContentSutra.

e-Choupal: ITC Scaled Down Commodities, Launched Tamil Portal In FY09

In its annual report, BSE listed ITC Ltd has noted that with Government intervention over the past year - like a ban on exports, stock controls and subsidization of prices, ITC had to exit trading in several commodities, and consequently, restructure its e-Choupal network.

ITC launched 50 e-Choupals during the year in Tamil Nadu, supported by the Tamil version of echoupal.com “with over 250 web pages”, looking to target crops such as paddy. ITC also set up three more Choupal Sagar malls during the year, and now has 24 Choupal Sagars in three states. (more…)

Why The SIM Card Should Be India’s National ID Card

(by Sanjay Swamy, CEO, mChek)

Imagine India as a country where 100% of the population is uniquely identified, has connectivity for telecom services and also has access to structured financial services. Imagine secure, personalized, anytime-anywhere healthcare services, government disbursements, loan disbursements and repayments! Imagine – the SIM card can become the government issued voter ID card – and one could even “vote” from the convenience of one’s mobile phone. (more…)

Asides

• One of our readers had sent us an Alexa chart comparing the reach of the famous FakeIPLPlayer blog with that of Indianexpress.com. While we don't endorse Alexa as an accurate barometer of traffic (because of the reported influence of users who have installed the Alexa Toolbar), it is used for the purpose of comparison: in this case, we compared the pageviews percentage with that of some of India's premier newspaper sites.  Maybe online newspaper sites shouldn't just be a facsimilie of print...That said, the Fake IPL Player blog is something of a tinderbox, and traffic shouldn't be the only barometer for an advertiser. We tried to balance out the Alexa data with information  from Google Trends, but nothing there. Vizisense has some information, though.  #
• Remember the last elections, and the famous "Main Atal Bihari Vajpayee bol raha houn" calls that we frequently had to disconnect? Well, the BJP doesn't appear to have learned from its mistakes from spamming mobile users during the last elections: I just got a call from Rajnath Singh, President of the BJP, from the number +914044783030. Apart from this, I've also received 5 unsolicited SMS' from the political party since 1:38 AM on Sunday, from alphanumeric short codes beginning with LM (Loop/BPL, Mumbai) and MD (MTNL, Delhi). An explanation of how alphanumeric short codes are structured, here. The party appears to be flouting the Do Not Call norms set by the TRAI. What's also strange about the call, is the incorrect identification of constituency - Singh asked me to vote for a particular BJP candidate in Ghaziabad, while my constituency is Chandni Chowk in Delhi. Given the recent trend of errors in the electoral rolls, I just hope I don't have to drive down to Ghaziabad to vote. #
• Voting has begun today for electing members to India's Parliament - people who are going to make decisions on our behalf. We urge you to vote in these elections, despite the refrain that we have heard over the past five years, that the urban, educated constituency does not matter (to the politician). We do not matter to many of those standing for elections, because many of us do not vote; because we don't constitute a tangible vote bank, and don't make a difference to the "electoral math". Democracy is the rule of the mob, so we have to participate en masse to matter. We urge you to vote in these elections, if not just to ensure that the more worthy of the candidates is elected, then just so that the urban, educated class matters as a voting segment in the next. The next elections may not be very far away. So, Please vote. In the first phase, voting will be held in 124 constituencies in: Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Kerala, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Andaman & Nicobar, Lakshwadeep. #