Weekly

Weekly WrapUp (10-14 November)

By MediaNama ⋅ November 17, 2008 ⋅ One Comment

Most Read Articles At MediaNama

Notes from the Rediff.com Earnings Call garnered maximum interest from our readers last week - for the first time, Rediff (REDF) CEO Ajit Balakrishnan shared the Advertising revenue split1 between key segments CPC and CPM, as well as Financial Services, Jobs and Travel. Much more here.

Our first ever guest post on Saving the Internet Media by Shyam Somanadh was the subject of much debate. Somanadh believes companies need to cut content costs, set clear Return on Investment for Traffic Acquisition Costs, Engage users better, know how to read data and know their technology. To share your views with us as a Guest Post, please mail nikhil AT medianama DOT com.

This week, Rajshri Media intends to begin publishing 100 full length movies on YouTube, starting with those from the Rajshri Films portfolio. 17 percent of viewers on Rajshri.com watch full length movies in one go - a substantial number, says Rajshri MD Rajjat Barjatya. Meanwhile YouTube continues to have pirated content on its site, and is the middle of a battle over piracy on YouTube with T-Series.

Mobile VAS company IMI Mobile finally announced its European acquisition - of Music Distributor DX3. It appears that they’ll use DX3s network primarily for marketing content.

Quite a few readers were interested in my notes from a discussion I had with students doing MBA (Tech) at NMIMS, Mumbai - some follow up questions on whether the students are on LinkedIn and blog have subsequently been answered in the comments. All of them use the Mobile Interent, mostly to check mail and Cricket scores.

Other Industry News:

– At IAMAI-DE08, Navin Shah, CEO of Percept Pictures blamed digitalization of content for encouraging piracy, saying that over the last 5-6 years, “the music industry has grown by 2%, while digital is growing by 40%” and digital has made piracy cool. PS Saminathan, Group Chairman, Pyramid Saimira launched into a tirade against the star system in film-making - and wondered if they’ll get better control through digital distribution, by aggregating the long tail.

– Bharti Telesoft will provide deploy SMSC, MMSC and WAP Gateway for all 21 of MTNs companies

– TV Ramachandran of COAI ”In plain terms, we only provide the pipeline for a value added service. What goes through the networks is neither a concern nor a responsibility of the telecom operator. Mobile Operators are flexible…more than just a pipe when it suits them, just a pipe when it doesn’t.

– Satyam Buys Motorola’s Malaysian Software Development Center

– Thin PC co Novatium has tied up with BSNL for deployment. The reason - 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.

– MovieBeam, which was bought by UFO Moviez earlier this year will be launched in India within 6 months, targeting consumers in India and the “Hospitality Sector” In USA. “This model can earn as much as Rs. 5 crores for 1 show.” The MovieBeam box in India may also come with a number of additional features - like DVD storage and Internet connectivity, though UFO will have to establish a return path for Internet.

Industry Moves

– Mohit Hira, who had left Indiatimes a couple of months ago, has joined NIIT as head of e-learnings (Retail) according to afaqs.com

Jobs

- Manager/Sr. Manager - Sales at One97 Communications - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore
- Manager/Sr. Manager - Sales (Media) at One97 Communications - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore
- Manager/Sr. Manager - Sales (Enterprise) at One97 Communications - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore
- Manager - Products (Enterprise) at One97 Communications - Noida
- Product Manager at One97 Communications - Noida
- Team Leader/Project Leader/ Project Manager at One97 Communications - Noida
- Team Leader/Project Leader/ Project Manager at One97 Communications - Noida
- Marketing Manager at Opera Software - Chandigarh, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore

Detailed jobs here. To post jobs, contact nikhil@medianama.com

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Weekly

Weekly Wrapup (3-7 November)

By Nikhil Pahwa ⋅ November 10, 2008 ⋅ Post a Comment

Most Read Stories on MediaNama

Reliance Entertainment is planning to launch an online advertising network called Kyphy, in April 2009. The project is being led by Sudipto Majumdar, former CTO of Zapak, and is another instance of a publisher entering the Ad Network space. Ibibo (MIH India) has its own ad network - AdWinks

Carwale.com, a leading player in the online auto classifieds space has raised $7 million from Sierra Ventures. Lead generation is a key source of revenue for the company, which closed FY08 with revenues of close to Rs. 4 crores. However, in the past few months, online advertising budgets have been slashed, and car sales are down.

Enterprise mobility company ValueFirst has entered the direct to consumer business with the launch of SMSMEON from subsidiary SpotOn Media. The service offers free keywords to users, and makes money when users pay Rs. 3 for a premium SMS to check updates. Implications of this launch.

NEA Indo-US Ventures, IDG Ventures and Accel India Venture Fund II have invested $5 million in Myntra, a company which provides personalised and on-demand consumer products. The company did Rs. 4-5 crores in revenue last fiscal, a bulk of sales coming in the last few months. They expect to break even by the end of FY10.

Microsoft India has launched maps powered by Navteq, a company which was acquired by Nokia last year. Nokia has its own maps service in the market, with plans to power local business information. We wonder if Navteqs multi-year agreement with Microsoft will be renewed. Google also has its own plans.

Also on MediaNama

Eterno Infotech, a mobile applications company based out of Bangalore is in talks with Rediff.com for investment, according to Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan. Eterno has a mobile based transliteration application similar to Quillpad, which Rediff has invested in, and a music discovery application which allows purchase of ringtones and wallpapers, among others.

Sequoia Capital funded social networking site MingleBox.com has had a change of mandate: focusing now more on the education domain, instead of being just another college hangout. Others like PagalGuy, Coolavenues and Info Edge’s Shiksha have a head start.

Live Current Media, which initially inked a deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India for powering their portals for $50 million over 10 years, has renegotiated their agreement to bring down payouts by $1.25 million for this year and the next. They will also be powering the portal for another Cricket property based on the Champions League T20 tournament.

India TV has set up a separate company for the digital domain, India TV Interactive, with Arvind Mahendru from GroupM joining as SVP (New Media). A number of media companies in India have set up separate Interactive divisions over the past year, with an eye on raising capital separately.

Mathrubhumi, a widely read Malayalam newspaper went mobile, assisted by mobile VAS company Mobshare. Mobshare has a revenue share agreement for advertising with Mathrubhumi, and intends to bring more such companies into the fold. The model is similar to that being implemented by July Systems.

Reliance Entertainment company Zapak.com inked a deal with Greystripe for advertising supported single player games. They already had a deal with Cotopia for mobile multiplayer games. Greystripe competes with Hovr for such deals. The games depend on GPRS connectivity for delivering ads.

Results

Rediff.com reported a net loss of $0.42 Million, though the company claimed the numbers were impacted by a declining rupee - In rupee terms, the India Online revenues increased by 5.5%

During their earnings call, OnMobile Global CEO Arvind Rao said that that mobile operators, globally, have slowed down on deployment of services. The pilot test for their AdRBT platform is due to finish by the end of November, and they’ve been tweaking the service based on consumer feedback. Details on their revenue breakup and performance numbers here.

Sify.com’s consumer business continued to decline, with lower number of Cybercafe users and broadband subscribers, and the broadband ARPU declining from Rs. 316 to Rs. 305. Consumer Business revenue was down 7% to $7.5 M, and the company dropped broadband rates in the quarter to stem the decline.

IPTV company IOL Netcom has reported a profit after many a quarter, with substantial jump in revenues - at Rs. 14.19 crores, up from Rs. 3.04 crores last quarter. They intend to raise funds via QIB placement.

Northgate Technologies, which owns the social networking site Bharatstudent.com, has reported a net profit for Q2 of Rs. 22.4 Crores. According to their annual report, their subsidiary Social Media India Ltd, which owns Bharatstudent, reported a loss of Rs. 3.96 Crores for FY08.

Jobs