Cisco has invested Rs 27 crore ($5.5 million) for 17% stake in the AR Rahman & Shekhar Kapur's media startup 'Qyuki', reports Economic Times, although a report from The New York Times's India Ink quotes Kapur stating that the number was incorrect. Kapur refused to disclose any financial details to the site. This is the same venture that Medianama had reported about in November 2010, and a little over a year and a half later, it appears to be ready for launch. We had heard about Cisco's investment then, but had been unable to confirm it. At that time, we'd heard that the venture was going to focus on digital content creation in the media and entertainment segment for distribution across various digital platforms like Internet and Mobile; based out of Bengaluru, it is headed by Poonacha Machaiah, who was previously the chairman and CEO of ABOVE Solutions Inc. The platform, expected to allow the co-creation of creative content and partly crowd source content like lyrics, music etc, is expected to go on this platform, to go live in May, and enable the creation of new films and music albums. Details on how the platform works are pretty sketchy right now. Shekhar Kapur said that they have hired around 25 people into their Bangalore office and according to Qyuki website, they seem to be hiring engineers (Web 2.0 programmers, Java Programmers) as well as artists (Concept Artists, Copywriter, Visual Designer, Pre Vis Artist / Post Animator), suggesting that they intend to create original IP's for possible content partnerships later. One thing which…
