MIH India Global Internet, the holding company for Indian Internet properties like ibibo.com, dwaar.com, onefamily.com, Newscola.com and bixee.com, and ad network AdWinks, has entered into an agreement to divest as much as 50 percent stake (less one share) to China based Tencent Holdings. Tencent, in turn, will invest at least $7.5 Million in MIH India over a period of three years, though it has the option of increasing that investment if needed. There are some conditions (of assuming certain loans) under which Tencent can increase its holding to 50 percent shareholding (minus one share). Burn Rate: Take a look at the losses that MIH has suffered since launch: Assuming that MIH started operations around August 2006, they've suffered a net loss of $18.947 Million in 23 months - an average loss of $1.114 Million (Rs. 4.76 Crores) per month. Some of that money has been spent on acquiring a 30 percent stake in ACL Wireless for $12.3 Million in July 2007, acquiring Bixee and Pixrat (for websites and a team of developers in Bangalore), developing products, allowing users to call each other for free, payouts to users as prizes, sponsoring TV shows like ibibo MTV Superstar and ibibo FTV Fashion Photographer. Internal company transaction? This may be considered to be an internal company transaction, since the parent company of MIH India - Naspers, owns a 35.5 percent stake in TenCent. Interestingly, I'd heard murmurs of TenCent being in talks with MIH India around a year ago, but wasn't able to…
