On Bookmyshow’s Airtel Partnership

Ticketing company Bookmyshow.com will offer Airtel subscribers across India access to tickets for movies, concerts, events, plays and sport events via a mobile application, Bharti Airtel’s on-deck WAP portal Airtel Live (http://live.airtelworld.com), and voice call at 54321-91, which gets redirected to the Bookmyshow call center for tele-booking. The price for telebooking isn’t mentioned in the release, but customers are going to be in for a rude shock if they’re charged standard voice portal rates (Rs. 6/min) for dialling 54321-91.

But why does Bookmyshow need to partner with Airtel? Does the direct to consumer model not work for Mobile Ticketing? Partering with the mobile operator gives the company the opportunity to reach out to a larger customer base. Mobile ticketing has been piloted in the past - by PVR Cinemas and Fame Adlabs, but we really haven’t heard of them after their launch; I don’t think they’ve achieved any kind of scale. I had tried out the PVR application two years ago (it’s been that long. 

(more…)

STAR JV With Korean Co Gets FIPB Approval For Shopping Channel

STAR CJ Network India, a joint venture between Star India and South Korean company CJ Home Shopping, has received an FIPB approval for setting up a home shopping channel in India. The approval allows the joint venture to invest up to 100 percent foreign investment in the channel. Media reports had suggested that the JV is looking to invest around $2 Million, and is probably going to be launched in early 2009.

The channel will compete with HomeShop18, the venture from Network18 which has both a TV and an online presence. In July this year, Homeshop18 had raised Rs. 90 crores in a second round of funding from its investors SAIF Partners (Rs. 68.3 crores) and Capital18 (Rs. 21.3 crores).

What attracts STAR to this genre? Well, for one thing - the growth. Going through Network18s financial results, I noticed that Homeshop18 has doubled its revenues since Q1 - they reported a quarter-on-quarter increase in operating revenues of 64%, at Rs. 5.03 crores for Q209, up from Rs. 2.46 crores for Q109, and an increase in orders of almost 50 percent. So how big is the market for sauna belts in India? Not that Network18 is doing well, though - the company has reported net losses for the last many quarters - this time, of Rs. 16.77 crores.

Disclosure: I own an inconsequential number of shares of Network18

Web18 Q2 Losses Triple To Rs. 24.2 Crores In A Quest For The No.1 Spot

Update: Web18 plans to raise Rs. 2 billion (around $40.5 million) through private placement, according to sources quoted by Indiantelevision.com. So the ADR is out the window; some reports had valued Web18 at $1 billion, though that must have reduced considerably. So are their investors looking for an exit?

Web18 has reported an alarming increase in losses for the second quarter of FY09 - Net Loss after Tax was Rs. 24.71 crores, up from the Rs. 8.1 crores they posted last quarter. Operating losses were as high as Rs. 18.98 crores as operating expenses almost doubled to Rs. 34.24 crores, up from Rs. 18 crores in Q1. Operating losses in Q1 had been less than a third, at Rs. 5.595 crores. In comparison, revenues grew marginally quarter on quarter at 16 percent - to Rs. 15.68 crores from Rs. 13.15 crores.

Interestingly, Web18 has also stated that they’re writing off aggressive marketing costs from Q2. But why such huge spends?

A Dash For Marketshare

Web18 is clearly making a dash for marketshare, and this is reflected in some changes they made over the last couple of weeks.

They’ve claimed the number 2 spot in India (according to Comscore) for In.com. Since then, they have begun transferring their other properties to the In.com domain. Now that even CricketNext and IBNLive have been transferred, I won’t be surprised if financial verticals, including their cash-cow MoneyControl, are next. It’s like putting all your eggs into one basket, and I wonder if they’re risking losing all the incoming links accumulated over the years, their pagerank, and consequently search traffic? Harakiri.

This is a clear attempt at claiming the number one spot for In.com, though the statistics would not be truthful, since the traffic be indicative of Web18 properties, not just In.com, separately. Advertisers would know that, right?

In.com claims to have a registered base of over 1.5 million users, over 3 million page views and over 500,000 visits a day.

(more…)

Web18 Integrates Buzz18 And StoreGuru Into In.com; From Verticals To A Horizonal…

Web18, the Internet company from Network18, has begun moving some of its properties to the domain In.com - starting with its entertainment portal Buzz18 and e-commerce portal StoreGuru. Buzz18 is now hosted at buzz18.in.com, while StoreGuru has been moved to the domain http://shop.in.com/ and rebranded. Apart from these, In.com has also integrated Live TV, with mostly Network18 channels, and a podcast section.

Web18s financials indicate a considerable increase in the companys spends over the last two quarters - with operating expenses of Rs. 18.5 Crores in the last quarter (operating loss of Rs. 5.59 crores), and Rs. 31.5 crores (operating loss of Rs. 13.5 crores) in the quarter before that; we believe much of this expenditure has been on In.com, which is Web18’s biggest bet yet.

Over the past month or so, we’ve noticed several instances of Adwords spends, TV advertisements and tie-ups with Network18 properties like Singh is Kinng and Bigg Boss, and more so, the company trying get users from across its channels to sign up for in.com; they’ve splashed advertisements asking users to sign up for In.com at MoneyControl, IBNLive, CricketNext and now Josh18.

So is the company getting desperate to make a success of In.com? Rishi Khiani, COO of Web18 disagrees, saying that it isn’t desperation, but means of acquiring users - “We were set aggressive targets by our management, and the entire process was in order to meet those targets, which we’ve now beaten.”

The integration of group sites into In.com will consolidate traffic, and make it possible for Web18 to sell a high traffic for the domain; it is not uncommon for sites to integrated their domains in order to showcase a higher traffic to advertisers. On the traffic consolidation theory, Varun Singh, CTO of Web18 concurs, saying that “We’ll be taking lots more steps towards consolidation. It’s a process we’ve started. We’ve already made it to the India top 20, according to Comscore and Alexa, and this is an effort to consolidate all the traffic rankings.”

Also, juxtapose this move of consolidating properties into a horizonal, with Reliance’s strategy of developing separate portals. I wonder how Zapak and BigFlix are doing in terms of revenues…and whether, some day, we’ll see all the BIG portals being consolidated into one, in order to showcase more traffic…

Khiani and Singh declined to discuss in detail the performance on In.com, so I guess we’ll have to wait for the Web18 Q2 results, due in a week or so, for more details. Meanwhile, it appears that CricketNext has been redesigned yet again. I think it’s the 55th 2nd redesign this year.

Disclosure: I own an inconsequential number of shares of Network18

IBN18: To Raise $90 M; IBN-Lokmat To Divest 13%; Regional Paper Deferred

IBN18 Broadcast has informed the BSE of plans to raise Rs 400 crore ($90.25 million), though they’re keeping their options open about whether it will be through either a public issue, FCCB issue, private placement basis or a QIB placement. They’ll need shareholder approval for this, and have called for an Extra-ordinary General Meeting October 1st for shareholders approval.

Meanwhile, IBN-Lokmat, the Marathi TV channel JV between IBN18 and the Lokmat Group has received FIPB approval to divest 13 percent stake. Another JV (TV18 sure does have many to juggle) - IBN and the Jagran Prakashan group have decided to defer the launch of their regional language paper business paper, given the prevailing market conditions

Disclosure: I own an inconsequential number of shares of Network18

Voice Search Engine Ubona Gets Funding From Capital18; Thoughts On Voice Search

Update: Sarbvir Singh, MD of Capital18 has informed MediaNama that Capital18 does only VC and PE investments - the private treaty deals handled by Synergy18; (and this is a Capital18 investment, not a Synergy18 deal). Singh appears extremely bullish on Ubona as a white labeled solutions provider - with deals on revenue sharing basis. He said that the company will be rolling out solutions for 4-5 “Large National Brands” in the next few months.

Original story: Voice is the flavour of the season in India. After OnMobile acquired French Speech Recognition company Telisma, Ubona, a voice search company has received an undisclosed Series A round of investment from Capital18, the investment arm of the Network18 Group. Ubona apparently has developed a patent-pending set of speech recognition systems, tailored to the Indian context - languages, accents and dictions.

At present, Ubona has a Foodie Hotline for Bangalore, and I just tried it out, from Delhi, by dialing 080-40700000

Hey, it’s McDonalds, not…
Maybe it’s my sleepy 8:00am voice, but I just tried a voice search for McDonalds, and the speech recognition offered me the following choices - Monark, Inox, Mughals, Shinoi Foods, before finally getting it right. McDonalds is present in multiple locations, so this was a trick question, and I was interested in finding out how Ubona deals with that problem. They offered the following choices - Kormangala, Cunningham Road, Old Madras Road, Brigade Road, with an option to list more. On choosing Koramangala, they connected me to McDonalds, after which I hung up, since I don’t think they’ll deliver from Kormangala to Delhi. I’d also requested an SMS, which they sent across, with details for 7 McDonalds in Bangalore

How Local Search is monetized
The revenue model is around lead generation - in case of Ubona, they’d probably be paid for every call that they connect to a restaurant. I’d spoken to a JustDial client last year, and he’d told me that every time his information his given to a potential customer, he pays Rs. 70, and for this, he received the customers name, phone/mobile number and email address, if disclosed, by SMS and Email. The information is sent out almost immediately. The service can also be monetized by playing an advertisement before allowing the user to search for information. A premium service (charged according to minutes of use) is also an option, but unlikely to be very successful on a mass scale, given that free services already exist.

Automated vs Manual
Manual services are likely to be far more accurate, but scalability is an issue. For every additional line, you’ll have to add another call center executive, and users might have to wait for their turn. So scaling adds to employee costs. An automated system is more expensive to develop and difficult to refine - different accents, dialects, languages, particularly in a country like India where dialects can change from town to town.

More on Synergy with Network18, Competition and Context (more…)

Web18 CMO Neeraj Sanan Puts In His Papers

Neeraj Sanan, Chief Marketing Officer of Web18, the Internet company from the Network18 group, has confirmed to MediaNama that he has put in his papers. Sanan will be moving to back to Delhi, but didn’t disclose details of his next appointment, or whether he will continue to be in the Digital Media space.

He had joined Web18 in August last year from Dabur, where he was the Deputy General Manager (Marketing) for their consumer care division. Sanan has around 11 years of experience in sales and marketing, and has worked with Joyco India, ICI India, Asian Paints and Steel Authority of India Ltd.