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Homing in on broadband TV
The San Jose based Homeland Networks
is gearing up for the broadband era in India and across
the Asian continent. The venture promoted by ex-Intelite
and broadband expert Ron Victor has unleashed three sites
www.tvofindia.com, www.radioofindia.com and www.pressofindia.com.
The company believes in "interactivity by ethnicity
and geography".
Tvofindia.com is a project for the broadband world and already
has a bit of broadband programming which can be viewed as
streaming video. UTV has signed on as a content provider
and has picked up a 10 per cent stake, apart from providing
infrastructure. Ron is in talks with several media companies
for providing interactive content and he wants tvofindia
to be a platform for interactive programmes in all genres.
The site claims to generate 1,000 viewers a day.
Says Ron, "We'd
like to work with every single media company in India to
provide exciting interactive content to the viewers. Our
ambition is to make the whole world into a single studio.
We want our viewers to get an incredible experience which
cannot be felt on regular television or radio, and interactivity
will be a key component."
Homeland Networks has already struck a deal with a media
company for content. Talks are on with a couple of television
channels.
The company is also looking at archived programming from
different media companies and providing them with a medium
to showcase them.
Currently tvofindia.com focusses on the NRI community due
to the availability of broadband abroad. But Ron Victor
is confident of it gathering pace in India within a year
and half to three years and would then focus on the resident
Indian community.
The revenue model of the company is sponsorships and advertising
apart from e-commerce which will take some time. Pay-per-view
and video-on-demand will also generate revenues. The global
viewership will be backed by local advertising and e-commerce
and will additionally have global branding opportunities
for advertisers. The difference between traditional Internet
advertising and advertising on Homeland sites would be the
feedback and the possibility of monitoring the actual effectiveness
of the ads, reveals Victor.
The company is backed Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia who
has picked up a 5% stake in the company, KB Chandrashekhar
of Exodus fame having 5% stake, Ronnie Screwvala of UTV
who holds 10% stake. The company is in talks with a couple
of Venture Capitalists for the second round of funding.
Victor plans to focus on the China market after the India
and to replicate his India model for Internetters there.
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