NDTV's board has approved a fund-raising for its auto portal CarAndBike.com (Fifth Gear Ventures Limited) from Autobyte Private Limited. CarAndBike.com is essentially what used to be NDTV Auto, and is a site which allows consumers to research vehicles, buy and sell used cars, and has news and reviews of cars and bikes. Following the "infusion of funds" in Fifth Gear Ventures Ltd, the shareholding of the NDTV group in the business will be diluted, and the control and management of the venture will be transferred to Autobyte. Fifth Gear will cease to be a subsidiary of NDTV, following this fund-raising. Details of the transaction - the amount being invested, the shareholding being diluted - are not yet available. NDTV has little information available about CarAndBike.com. Its website says that it lists over "42 [vehicle] manufacturers and 336 [vehicle] models. In its 2015-16 annual report, NDTV said that it had "doubled its traffic within six months of its launch. It currently has one of the highest time spent on Product Pages amongst all auto portals in the Country. The site has on-boarded eight manufacturers for direct sale of cars and bikes, covering 40% of market pan India. The portal has done four exclusive launches since inception and attracted around 50,000 customers. It has also launched the first ever C2C auction engine in the country and is getting ready to launch a Hindi site to capture the larger vernacular play. Subsidiary financials for Fifth Gear Ventures Limited for FY16 indicate: Revenue from Operations of…
