NDTV Convergence Ties Up With TutorVista; Our Take On Their Strategy

Going through NDTV.com, we noticed a few sites and sub-sites that we haven’t come across before: Among them, is a tutoring site NDTVTutor.com, powered by Tutorvista.com, which primarily targets their US based visitors. While we don’t endorse Alexa as a measure of traffic, according to Alexa, only around 8.5% of NDTV.com’s traffic comes from the US.

The movies site - NDTVMovies.com also features a new look. We also noticed a couple of other partnerships that the company has inked, though we’re not sure of how old these are - a commodities site powered by commodityonline.com, and an astrology section powered by Astroyogi.com. Interestingly, there’s also an environment site called Green.NDTV.com, sponsored by Toyota, with Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, Director General of TERI as their expert advisor. There’s an environmental anthem for you to sing along to (you may download it here)
Quick take on NDTVs strategy
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Times Now On Nautanki.tv; Thoughts On Video Content Online

Times Now, the English news channel from the BCCL (Times of India) Group will be going live on Nautanki.tv’s network, Nautanki CEO Sunil Nair informs us. Nautanki.tv is an online video network, with widgets spread across more than 6000 sites. Available online will be Times Now’s prime time show The Newshour, and feature shows No Full Stops (health) and The Foodie (a food and travel show). Times Now intends to eventually expand its offering on the network. 

Nautanki.tv has a strategic investment from Hungama (Virtual Marketing India Ltd), and claims that around 20% of their publishers are bloggers covering news, analysis, finance etc. Nautanki.tv also has content available from another BCCL TV channel - Zoom TV, as well as STAR TVs Channel [V]. 

Thoughts On Online Video Content In India, and Advertising

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OLPC Targets 3 Million Laptops In 365 Days; In Talks With 9 State Govts

Targets will be targets will be targets, but much like the telecom ministers dream of 500 million Internet connection by 2012, it’ll be a pleasant surprise if the One Laptop Per Child initiative is able to reach its target of 3 million laptops in 365 days.

I spoke to Satish Jha, President & CEO of OLPC India, who said that for shipping to begin in India, they need to hit the magic number of 1 million XO laptops, and they’re counting on support from corporates. “If a country can take 8 million cellular phones a month, they can take 3 million laptops in a year.” If only…

The OLPC foundation has launched the G1G1 (Give One Get One) initiative in India, as per which, a customer can purchase one laptop, and the OLPC foundation will gift another laptop to a child in a developing country. The XO costs around $210 to produce, so you’ll be paying for two (around $400) under the G1G1 initiative. What’s not palpable, is that the Indian government is charging an import duty of 10.2% on the laptops.

Some readers might remember that a couple of years ago, India had rejected the OLPC at a national level. Consequently, the OLPC foundation is talking to governments at the state level in India - Jha said that they’re currently talking to 9 state governments, who are interested in the project. “Education is a state subject anyway. It’s a leap of faith for them, but I’ll talk about them only once we close a deal.” But how do they intend to reach the target of 1 million laptops? “I have my strategy and we’re moving in that direction. One industrialist said we’re looking at 700,000 students, another says 200,000, yet another says 10,000. We’re looking at the aggregation of those numbers. We have 120 million children who need it. To get the one person we have to prove to them at every step of the way - with support and responses.”

The OLPC has been doing pilots in India, covering 5 schools and 150 students across the country right now, in UP. The laptops connect to each other without WiFi, and only needs a service provider for Internet connectivity.
More on distribution, competition and what needs to be done
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Yang Steps Down, As Yahoo Looks For A New CEO

An uneasy year so far for Yahoo has perhaps worsened with co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang stepping down, and the search for a new CEO…maybe even a CEO who will be able to negotiate a sale for the troubled company. Yang had replaced Terry Semel as CEO in June 2007.

The real trouble for Yahoo began when Microsoft made a public, and almost boisterous $44.6 Billion, $31 per share bid for Yahoo in February this year. At that time, Yahoo was trading at around $19 per share. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, blasted Yang for being hostile towards the Microsoft deal, as Yahoo declined the offer. After the deadline for negotiations to be concluded lapsed, Microsoft withdrew the offer in May. Icahn, who owned almost 5% of Yahoo, tried to garner support for renegotiations with Microsoft, despite the announcement of an advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo, around Yahoo Search.  Eventually, Icahn settled for three board seats at Yahoo - including one for himself. 

However, a recent threat of an anti-trust lawsuit against the Google-Yahoo deal made Google withdraw. Read their blog post on the same here. That’s when Yang again sent out feelers to Microsoft, saying Yahoo willing to re-negotiate the deal though this time, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer declined.

BoomTown reported that Yang was stepping down - they published an internal mail sent out by Yang to Yahoo employees, here. Yang will return to his previous role as Chief Yahoo.

None of this is good for Yahoo - such an uncertain environment for a company impacts growth as potential partners may defer deals, and employees may look for more secure environs.

IMI Mobile Acquires Music Distributor DX3 For Entering The European Market

Is the content aggregation and distribution the most vulnerable space in the Digital Content Business?

Hyderabad based Mobile VAS co IMI Mobile has bought London based digital music distibutor dx3, reports ContentSutra. Dx3 provides legal digital downloads, and in 2004-05, added a mobile content delivery component as well. The company will serve as a gateway to the European market. DX3 will be renamed IMI. A couple of months ago VR Vishwanath, Chairman and CEO of IMI Mobile had told MediaNama that the deal size is around $10 million, but we wonder if it’s been revised downwards given recent trends. Neither the report nor the press release mention the size of the deal or the percentage acquired, some reports suggest it’s a 100% acquisition. We’ll confirm and update.  

Content or Marketing?

Well, both. dx3 has a content marketing platform, which can be used to deliver promotional premium content that is free to users. IMI Mobile appears to be more keen on dx3 for marketing services.  According to Vishwanath, this gives them the opportunity for media campaigns on both Internet and Mobile, given dx3 strength in the web domain. Frankly, apart from the clients and distribution network that dx3 will bring to the table, we’re not sure of what else there is to this deal. 

DX3 distributes music for clients like EMI, MTV, Universal, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG, and has tie-ups with Virgin Mobile, Smash Hits, Sony Ericsson, among others. 

This appears to be a backwards integration for IMI Mobile - which is more of a platform service provider. As DX3 CEO Anu Shah put it - “It’s very difficult for pure digital music providers to make money in the space“. Aggregators and distributors get squeezed from both sides - by operators and music labels, and this is essentially a means of combining revenue share which was earlier divided between content aggregator and platform service provider.

This appears to be an acquisition that is similar to Motorola’s acquisition of Soundbuzz, though Soundbuzz had branded services as well, not just a white labeled solution. In the past year, we’ve seen other significant moves in this space - when Nokia entered the content services space with Ovi, and OnMobile inked content deals in South India.

So…Is the content aggregation and distribution the most vulnerable space in the Digital Content Business?

Saving Indian Media: Part I - The Internet

Note: If you have an opinion to share with our readers, please do send across your contribution at nikhil AT medianama DOT com. However, please bear in mind that the selection of posts for publishing is a subjective decision, and we may request you for changes. 

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by Shyam Somanadh

Indian media has had the good fortune of being in a market reality that is different from the ones we see in the west. Empowered by our third world status, we have a market that is still far from being saturated and playing on potential than actuals, we have had it good for a while now. The past five years has been a time of extreme prosperity in the segment, with everyone and their uncle (or aunt) starting a publication or a television channel because the uncle (or aunt) next-door has one.

Quite a few of these entities were built on the ‘invest-now-reap-the-benefits-later’ school of thought that is the cornerstone of a bullish market. When the industry as a whole is trending upwards in its vitals, almost everyone wants in on a piece of the action. Losses are glossed over, since at least some money is coming in and ‘it is just a matter of time’ before the huge chunk of change comes in. Which is all fine when the going is good. Trouble is that the going is not that good anymore.

Internet

If there is one thing that has marked the eight-plus years that I have had the good fortune of being a part of this industry, it is the perpetual promise of a better and bigger tomorrow. The number of times you hear “when the market opens up” at any industry event is always greater than the sightings of companies actually having a clue about what they are trying to accomplish in the long run. I have written at length on this topic before, so i won’t subject you to more of the same torture and we’ll look at the possible solutions:

1) Cut content creation costs: Let us face it, 80% of content across the majority of the media websites are pretty much the same. The troubling aspect of that equation is that every year it gets more expensive to produce this content, while the returns on it decreases every year. With the advent of the new traffic brokers like Google, Digg, Fark and a multitude of other aggregation points, it is extremely important to get the outlay of effort (between original and non-original content) right.

Content in this age and time is very much like data in consumer internet these days - not all of it is created equal, nor should it be treated equally. The takeaway from this being that you cannot put equal amounts of effort across your content segments. Content needs to be treated in accordance with the returns you receive on it. Well-performing content does not add much to existing numbers when you work on the quality side of it. You need to work the quantity side on those to make a difference.

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Novatium To Launch NetPC With BSNL; Why MTNL & BSNL

In what appears to be its largest deal yet, thin client company Novatium has signed a deal with government owned telecom operator BSNL to offer its Nova NetPC at Rs. 2999 (plus taxes), reports the Hindu. Details available on the pricing of the service are sketchy - just that the monthly subscription for the NetPC will be Rs. 175, while broadband connectivity is for Rs. 99.

As we’d mentioned earlier, the Nova NetPC comes with a fine print of additional charges: for example, the NetPC, when offered by MTNL, was priced at Rs. 4999 for installation and Rs. 399 per month. When you add the charges for a new MTNL landline connection, a new broadband connection, phone charges, modem rental, registration, installation and Nova Service, it came to Rs. 6698.96 ($146) and Rs. 616.86 ($13.5) per month, inclusive of all taxes.

The pricing hasn’t been put up on either Novatiums or BSNLs websites - which is a real shame, since one would expect Internet companies to at least make their tariff plans available online, on launch. Nevertheless, this is Novatiums most important launch yet, because BSNL has the largest wireline network in the country, and in particular, reaches out to B&C class towns where this may find takers. Their past deals have been with MTNL (Delhi and Mumbai only) and Tata Teleservices Maharastra (Maharashtra).

Why BSNL & MTNL

In India, the last mile hasn’t yet been opened - one of the great tragedies of telecom regulation and policy in the country. This has not only killed competition in the wireline segment, but let to a significant migration from wireline to wireless services - resulting in a continuous decline in the wireline user base. Nevertheless, aided by the government policy, public sector telcos still own a significant majority of the wireline connections:

At the end of June 2008, BSNL and MTNL combined had around 34.5 million wireline connections, of the total 38.92 million wireline connections - around 88% of the market. BSNL, in fact, has 99.78% of the rural market wireline connections, and 70.91% of urban. Add to that the facade that the government wants to live up to of providing low cost PCs and broadband to the poor, and you have a PR dream-come-true for the telecom ministry. 

The RCOM Challenge
I’m not sure if it’s much of a challenge, but perhaps the most significant development in the Internet space over the past year has been Reliance Communications offer of a laptop with a (poor) wireless Internet connection. Comparing with Novatiums deal with MTNL - MTNL-Novatium works out to Rs. 28905.92 (including taxes) for three years with the fixed line connectivity and the thin client, while RCOM is Rs. 36,000 with taxes extra for (poor) wireless connectivity and a laptop.

Rohit Sharma of Zapak asked yesterday at the IAMAI Digital Entertainment conference, for ideas for an increase in broadband penetration. Some ideas in the comments here.