On the HT Media earnings conference call, Amit Kumar from Investec Capital asked the companys management whether there is any plan to close down Shine.com. Shine.com went live on March 26th 2008, and the business was launched in 2007. Kumar pointed out that Shine.com has been "consistently loss making and scalability, profitability in the business has been very difficult to come by. Is it of any plan or any sort of thought on closing it down now?" Piyush Gupta, Group CFO at HT Media responded by saying that "I think that is a great question. Though we do not give forward [looking] statement, but I can tell you that in the next few quarters, a few things that we are experimenting on this particular business will bring it back to a reasonable level of health. I am not saying that is going to go gangbusters here, but I understand it has been a long time. But you also have to have a perspective that in most of these digital businesses,the monetization is very tough given the incumbent is a strong player. Also,the job market has been exceedingly soft for the many, many years now. However,suffice to say that we are doing something in the next couple of quarters. In any case we will bring down the cash burn position.I think if we just fast forward our plans,in the next couple of quarters we just might be positively surprised." Amit Kumar: "Sir I am just asking this question sort of theoretically,…
