The board of HT Media Ltd, the publisher of Hindustan Times and Mint, and the parent company of jobs portal Shine.com and social networking site Desimartini.com, has expanded its Memorandum of Association to include business as an advertising agent, allowing it to "purchase and sell advertising time or space on any media like newspaper, magazine, pamphlet, publication, television, radio, mobile, Internet, satellite in India or abroad". Shareholders are being asked to vote for or against the inclusion by means of a postal ballot. We contacted HT Media about reasons for the changes, particularly the inclusion of digital media and plans "to pursue the business to act as advertising agent,to purchase and sell advertising time or space". According to a representative of HT Media's Investor Relations team: "We had a common Ad sales team for all our print properties. However, post the demerger of Hindi business in a separate subsidiary things have changed slightly as HT Media continued to sell ad space on behalf of HMVL (Hindi business) for a sales commission. This change in MOA is just to clarify that HT Media can act as agent on behalf of HMVL for selling ad space." So there's no plan to set up an independent sales house like (now defunct) NDTV Media, but come to think of it, HT's subsidiary Firely was handling sales for StudyPlaces, which was acquired by Educomp. So why not expand its operations to create a digital sales house*? While Firefly appears to have done well last quarter,…
