INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CHANNEL PLANNED

Bangalore-based Technology Media Group Pvt Ltd (TMG) has announced its plans to launch a 24-hour information technology (IT) channel "Enter" by the end of the year. The company also intends to go in for an initial public offering in a couple of years.

TMG has roped in Risk Capital & Technology Finance Corporation Ltd, a subsidiary of Industrial Finance Corporation of India (IFCI), to fund the project, TMG director (partnerships), Indraneel Mukerjee, has said.

"A number of venture capitalists, specially from US have taken interest to the project and talks are on to reach to a final agreement," Mukerjee said, adding he expects the venture break even in a year and a half.

The company will partner other TV channels. "So far a couple of international channels have approached us, he said. He however, refused to disclose the names.

"We intend to go public sometime around 2002. However, we have sufficient funding to sustain ourselves for the next three years," he added. "The company already has 850 hours programming in its archives. We will remain media neutral in our approach and the channel content will be completely IT focused. Our target audience will be corporate, universities and anybody who is Internet savvy," he said.

TMG has adopted state-of-the-art philosophy of convergence of media forms to make available the most comprehensive and strategic range of print, electronic, on-line and other interactive media vehicles. Each supplementing the other in terms of occasion and duration of usage to provide a hi-bandwidth information conduit, he said. Elaborating on the programmes, he said that Enter would primarily cater to direct to business (D2B) needs which would include corporate profile, virtual events, road shows, product shows, site visits, customer testimonials among others. "We will have a large profile of viewer-ship from SEC A1, A2, B1and B2 cities. It is expected that about 1.5 million people would watch our programmes right after its launch," he said.

At present, TMG does not envisage any advertisement revenue for Enter but is looking forward to industry participation via strategic partnerships to fund the new channel.