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.

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

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

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

HT Media has reported a profit of Rs. 37.72 crores for the first quarter of FY09, up from Rs. 34.16 crores for the same quarter in FY08; revenues were up 17 percent Year on Year at Rs. 332.89 crores, and advertising revenues were up 19 percent. EBITDA was up 13 percent to Rs. 74.5 crores from Rs. 66 crores for Q1-08.

HT Media’s job portal Shine.com appears to have overwhelmed them - despite all the advertising spends, the number of registered users has gone up to 2.3 lakhs 7.4 lakh. They had claimed 1.25 lakhs at the end of last quarter, and that’s an addition of around 1153 6758 registered users per day during the quarter. Frankly, given all the advertising spends across Web, Print, TV and Radio - Shine’s performance has would have been lacklustre, if not disastrous at just 2.3 Lakh, but it’s 7.4 lakh in all. Update: during the earnings conference call, which I am currently on, the total number of subscribers has gone up to 7.4 lakh users on Shine.

During the quarter, HT Media paid an advance to Firefly e-ventures Ltd against an issue of equity shares amounting to Rs. 5 crores, as well as a loan of Rs. 3 crores. Remember, HT Media has intended to spend Rs. 150 crores in Firefly over the next 2-3 years.

Also note that Go4i.com shareholders have been allocated 22,600 HT Media shares of face value Rs. 2 each to shareholders during the quarter, post a court ruling.

Print - HT Media claims Mint is the number 2 paper in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai, in its segment. Interestingly, newsprint costs a serious cause for concern; raw material cost for HT Media increased 10 percent QoQ. Hindustan was launched in Dehradun and Chandigarh. HT Media tied up with German Media Group Hubert Burda to set up a printing facility
Radio - Fever 104, has around million listeners across Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore
Music - HT Music has also received a loan of Rs. 10 crores from HT Media.

Note: Any questions for HT Media? I am currently on the earnings call. Do leave a comment or tweet on Twitter

Mint Launches Mobile Site - m.livemint.com

A mobile version of Mint, the financial daily from HT Media, has gone live, accessible at http://m.livemint.com . Readers might remember that Mint had launched a limited mobile site around the Budget earlier this year; this time, they’ve launched a full fledged mobile site. The site gives access to three segments: News, Markets and Life. Now, Mobile usage is significantly different from Internet usage, and Mint Mobile gets a few things right:

• More scrolling with shallow links: Mint Mobile gives access to a lot of content on its homepage - Top Stories, News Segments, Stock Market udates at a glance, Corporate News, Views, Photo Gallery, Most Read, and a Poll. The markets page gives access to the Mark To Market segment, Financial Results and News. Thankfully, the Life segment, focused on lifestyle content, also includes Mints excellent blogs.
• Facilitating access to more content on each page — by giving access to the Next Story, Top Stories and Most Read on each page.

However, I didn’t quite like the idea of a marquee on a WAP site - who has the patience to wait for sentence to scroll across on a small mobile screen, particularly if it isn’t click-able? Top News serves that purpose. Another problem is that the content is without line-breaks, which becomes all the more unreadable on the smallest screen. It’s fine for a story that is 180-200 words, but for someone to read 687 words without a line-break or white space - it had better be worth the effort.

It’s nice to see a mobile site with images. However, if the pages take forever to load - which they can since GPRS is erratic and not really 256kbps - it may not work for many. We do love Google News for the mobile, yes?

I also noticed that there aren’t any ads yet on Mint Mobile, and it’ll be interesting to see how the structure will change once they enable advertisements. They are <b>collecting user data - asking users to enter a Name, Gender and City, before signing in.</b>

Note: You may also read MediaNama via mobile, by accessing the same URL - www.medianama.com - via your mobile phone.

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