R. Sukumar Takes Over From Raju Narisetti As Editor of Mint

Sources have informed MediaNama that R. Sukumar is taking over from Raju Narisetti as the Editor of Mint, the financial paper from HT Media Ltd. Sukumar was previously the Managing Editor of Mint. He had joined Mint from Business Today, where he had been Managing Editor. More on him here.

Narisetti was the founding Editor of Mint, having joined the publication in April 2006, from the Wall Street Journal, Europe. We;re told he will be taking on an advisory role at the Hindustan Times. This caps off a year of changes at the top at the HT Media publication: earlier in September, Rajan Bhalla, the Publisher of Mint, had stepped down. It’s sister publication, the Hindustan Times, had appointed Sanjoy Narayan as the Editor in Chief in July.

HT Media Forms Mobile Marketing JV With Velti PLC; Conflict Of Interest?

What a time to start a mobile marketing company…HT Media has formed a joint venture with Velti Plc, a London Stock Exchange listed company, to provide mobile marketing solutions in India, reports Livemint, an HT Media publication. Velti has had the BRIC countries on its radar, and earlier this year, reached an agreement to acquire up to 50 per cent of CASEE, China’s largest mobile advertising exchange, for an investment of up to US $6 million.

HT Media will hold 65% equity in the venture, which will be a subsidiary of HTs Internet subsidiary Firefly e-Ventures. Amit Garg, head of Firefly, will also head the JV, which will operate out of Gurgaon. Firefly also operates out of Gurgaon. 

This is the second significant strategic partnership for Velti - in 2007, they formed Ansible, a global mobile marketing agency with the Interpublic Group. Velti provides mobile advertising and marketing solutions to brands like Microsoft, GM, Coca Cola, Verizon, Bayer, Johnson and Johnson, Vogue Magazine, Mastercard, Colgate-Palmolive, Ferrero, Bacardi, as well as media companies like MTV, Disney, Associated Press, Fox Networks CBS and Real.

Going through Velti’s half-yearly financial report, I noted that Mobile Marketing and Advertising is largest segment, accounting for EUR 10 Million, platform services to enterprises accounted for EUR 3.2 Million, and platform services to operators accounted for EUR 2.6 Million. Download the report here.

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LiveMint Launches Podcasts

Mint, the business daily from HT Media, has launched podcasts at its website LiveMint. Titled LiveMint Radio, it features interviews with entrepreneurs and investors from the Silicon Valley, and is hosted by Kamla Bhatt of the KamlaShow. The first interview to go live is with Yogen Dalal, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund, and this will be followed up with interviews with Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and Mitchell Baker, Chairman of the Mozilla Corporation. Remember that Kamla Bhatt earlier used to do podcasts for Podtech, though the KamlaShow has been live for much longer.

Another show worth noting is the Expat Podcast, which provides an expatriates view of life in India, with inputs on how to “get your phone working, get a gas connection”. At present it features some expat Mint journalists, but they intend to follow it up with views from other expatriates.

Playthings, a Mint blog, also has its own show called Playcast, with inputs on websites, gadgets, games, game culture etc. The first Playcast features, interestingly, local search startup AskLaila.

No downloads, no permalinks?
While I liked the fact that some of the shows - particularly those with Kamla Bhatt, have transcripts available (this helps in SEO, and more importantly, the readers who’d rather skim through the interview) - there isn’t an option for downloading the interviews. In a bandwidth constrained country like ours, audio streaming might be an issue, although I must confess that I didn’t face any such issues. Nevertheless, an integration with iTunes for iPod downloads, and an MP3 download might help.  For some reason, IBNLive doesn’t allow download of podcasts either, though it’s not difficult if you’re using RealPlayer.

The other thing is - the Expat Podcast and PlayCast are available only via a popup window, with no permalinks to the podcasts, making it difficult for users to share with others.

In terms of an interface, I think Podtech had it figured out.

Q2-09: HT Media Call: Internet A Defensive Strategy; Livemint-Rs. 35-40 Lakhs; Education Portal

HindustanTimes.com (HT.com)

Q2 appears to have been flat, but that’s not a bad thing given the downturn. While HT declined to give specifics, they said that the numbers are around the same as last quarter - 10.5 million pageviews, and Rs. 70 lakh per month in terms of revenues.

The management appears to be backtracking on the statement they’d made in the last earnings call, about the online business being Rs. 100 crores in a year and a half. I’d asked them about whether there’s been a change in the outlook, given the downturn. The response “We realize that Internet is the business of the future, and our strategy is very clear: as it has happened in all the global countries, classifieds will move slowly from print to the website, and we have to make sure that that business does not go to anybody else. Which is why you’ve seen the launch of Shine, the jobs site. We’ll roll out the other classifieds sites with time.

Education Portal?

We’ve heard about HT Media planning to launch an education portal. In response to my question, HT was vague - saying that they’ll get some clarity on the verticals, including education, in the next 3-6 months. They did confirm that they are “actively considering” the education domain. “We keep on evaluating these things as we go, and there are not enough revenues right now for us to be looking critically in terms of returns etc. from these business separately.

Firefly: Shine & Desimartini

Too premature to share revenue numbers, since the portal is around 6 months old. The resume database/registrations are at around 1.2 million. Update: A majority of the Rs. 33.5 crores of the investment in FireFly so far has been spent on Shine.com. I asked about DesiMartini and HT said that the “less than $10 million tag” was an error, a minuscule amount was spent on the acquisition, and almost all of the overall investment has been in Shine. They declined to state the exact amount. Incidentally, it appears that the Desimartini.com redesign went live, just in time for the HT Media Earnings call. (Full disclosure: Desimartini was acquired by HT from my cousin Vivek Pahwa)

Livemint

Has been performing very well. In terms of pageviews, obviously we are not at the level that moneycontrol is at this point in time. We’ve just started the video section where we show live videos, which has been very encouraging. At this point in this, LiveMint makes around Rs. 35-40 lakhs per month. “Unfortunately, we are in a market scenario which is challenging not just for print media. In a good time, we definitely believe it’s a good business to be in, and sooner rather than later we’ll be able to leverage that property more aggressively.

Mobile

Is still in the drawing board stage. We’ll only be able to comment on that once the business is up and running.

Mint TV?

“These are market rumours and we do not comment on them.”

Details: Financials

Q1 Details: Financials, Earnings Call | Analysis/Report

Q1 Results and more more via our Financial Results page

Related: Q2-09 Results: HT Media Profit Down 49%, Revenues Up 18%; Firefly Gets Rs. 13.5 Crores In Q2

Q2-09 Results: HT Media Profit Down 49%, Revenues Up 18%; Firefly Gets Rs. 13.5 Crores In Q2

HT Media has reported a net profit of Rs. 16.28 crores for the second quarter of FY-09, down 49 percent from the Rs. 31.94 crores they had reported for Q2 last year. Quarter on quarter, profits are significantly down from Rs. 37.72 crores reported for the first three months of this fiscal. The company also changed accounting policy this fiscal, without which, the profit would have been even lower, by Rs. 1.1 crores. However, revenues were up 18.17 percent to Rs. 334.17 crores, up from Rs. 282 crores for the same quarter last year.

EBITDA is down to Rs. 45.03 crores, from Rs. 57.06 crores for the same quarter last fiscal, and Rs. 74.5 crores last quarter. Q2 was as strong as Q1 even last year, and raw material costs have increased significantly, which even caused competitor Business Standard to shut down its Gujarati newspaper and consequently, stop updating its Gujarati news-site. Update: Newsprint costs have increased by 24 percent over the previous year, and this has brought EBITDA margins down from 20 percent to 13 percent.

Firefly Investment: Rs. 13.5 crores
During the quarter, the company invested Rs. 13.5 crores in Firefly e-Ventures - of which Rs. 6 crores were by way of Equity Share Capital, and Rs. 7.5 crores as advance against Equity Share Capital. They’ve also invested Rs. 8 lakhs crores in another subsidiary - HT Music and Entertainment Company Ltd. Thus, the investment in Firefly has gone up from the last quarter, wherein they invested Rs. 5 crores, and gave a loan of Rs. 3 crores. Remember, HT Media mentioned a couple of quarter ago, that they intend to spend Rs. 150 crores in Firefly over the next 2-3 years.

Details: Financials (updated)
Q1 Details: Financials, Earnings Call | Analysis/Report

Related:
Shine.com: “We’re Not In The Pricing Game” Says Amit Garg, Business Head, Firefly
Q1 Results and more more via our Financial Results page

Shine.com: “We’re Not In The Pricing Game” Says Amit Garg, Business Head, Firefly

Shine.com, the Job portal from HT Media’s Firefly eVentures, has announced that they’ve crossed the 1 million registered users mark. These are tough times in the job portal business - ClickJobs- is looking for a strategic partner, and was in talks with Reliance for an exit; Cybermedia sold its resume database to TimesJobs. MediaNama spoke to Amit Garg, Business Head of Firefly e-Ventures on a number of topics - the sales cycle, the impact of the downturn, advertising spends, and debated their pricing strategy:

What is your “Active” userbase, as opposed to a registered user base?
We have a different way of looking at the userbase. People don’t have to come back to search for a job. They will get an automatic alert in case of relevant jobs. Crossing 1 million is encouraging for us especially since our registration process is long and we’re capturing a lot of data. Our technology works on structured capturing of the data - work experience, skill sets, education, preferences etc, and the form is almost 5 pages long.

Userbase and Clients

How many jobs do you have on the site, and what is your client base?
We have over 5000 jobs on the site, and around 2000 plus customers. These are split across IT, Infrastructure and Retail, and it mirrors the market.
You made a claim that “Shine has a high proportion of qualified candidates who are not available on other job sites.” How do you know?
Comscore gives you certain data - that more than 20 percent of our users are not there on other sites. Those are users unique to our site
Comscore doesn’t have access to unique registered users on other job sites…
I’ll have to check up on that. But even in the demonstrations we’ve done, often we throw up candidates that are not there in other sites. One of the things that we offer is anonymity. People who choose to remain anonymous, are often those with at a very senior level. Update: Garg has confirmed that Comscore gives them unique visitors and not registrations.

Sales

Out of the over 5000 listings, how many are paid?
A substantial amount. We only offer 1-2 postings as a demo.
And how many people are there in your sales team?
We have over 100 people, spread across seven locations.
What is the sales cycle in this industry like?
It differs - corporates, at times, take a long time. It could take 15-20 days to 1-2 months to crack a corporate account. Recruitment consultants have 1-2 decision makers, so its much faster with them. Consultants can be closed within 1-2 visits.
Where do you see a gap in the market?
The gap is there in terms of the existing set of customers getting a differentiated product. The fact is that recruitment consultants form a huge bulk of the market, and we have to serve that segment very very well.
But they’re already using Monster or Naukri. How do you approach them? What’s the conversion rate?
We had given a free trial period, and now we’re reaching out to them to convert them to paid accounts. I can’t talk about the conversation rate. The ability to get relevant candidates is significantly higher with us, and that’s what we’ve pitched.
The other sites rely on giving access to resumes - that’s more information than you are giving access to…
We don’t allow access to resumes, but I wouldn’t agree with the notion that they’re giving access to more information. We have a system which scans the database, and gives all relevant candidates. Also, they are alerted about new registrants who match requirements.

More on Advertising, Acquisitions and Gargs thoughts on Pricing, particularly on a price war: (more…)

Q1-09 Call: HT Media - Rs. 100 Crores Internet Biz In 1.5 Years; Matrimonial Portal In Q3, Real Estate In Q1 2010

Internet
HT Media expects their Internet business to be around Rs. 100 crores in terms of revenues in around a year and a half. The company has invested around Rs. 20 crores in the Internet business so far, of a total planned investment of Rs. 150 crores over the next 3 years.

At the same time, note that key portals hindustantimes.com and livemint.com are a part of HT Media - and not a part of the Internet subsidiary FireFly E-Ventures. Hindustantimes.com got around 10.5 million pageviews during the quarter, with revenues of around Rs. 70 lakh per month - “fairly small” according to the company.

FireFly E-Ventures is expected to launch their real estate and matrimonial portals are expected to be launched around Q4 of this year - Matrimonial will be by around Q4 of this year (Jan-March 2009), and real estate by Q1 of next fiscal year (April-June). In this context, it is also important to note that Real Estate advertisers account for 12-13 percent of HT Media’s revenues - 12 percent last fiscal, and 13 percent in Q1.

Some stats on Shine - I’m not sure if the HT Media management quite understands that metrics for a job portal are different from those for a news site like HT.com, but anyway - Shine receives 14 million pageviews per month, and this number is growing at 15 percent month-on-month. The portal gets 3 million unique users per month, and has a total registered user base of 7.3 lakh

Private Treaties
Accounted for a fairly small part of the total advertising revenue this quarter - around Rs. 6 crores. In all, deals have been struck for around Rs. 70 crores, spread over 3-5 years. What’s more, HT Media did not disclosure of names treaties investments, since these are covered by non-disclosure agreements. If you know of any Internet companies that have signed up with them, do let us know.

Related: HT Media Reports Profit Of Rs. 37.72 Crores; Shine Adds 6758 Registered Users/Day