iWorld
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.
iWorld
Jio IPO faces delay as India yet to clear listing rule changes
Proposed rule change allows mega IPOs to float just 2.5 per cent
MUMBAI: The Indian government’s delay in formalising changes to listing rules may derail the targeted timeline for the initial public offering (IPO) of Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Reliance Industries controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani.
According to media reports, Reliance is awaiting formal notification of regulatory amendments before appointing investment bankers and filing a draft IPO prospectus. The company is now aiming to submit the draft prospectus before April, depending on when the government issues the notification.
Jio, which owns India’s largest wireless operator, is widely seen as one of the crown jewels of Ambani’s business empire. Its listing, the first public offering of a major Reliance unit in nearly two decades, could become the country’s biggest ever IPO.
Investment bankers have proposed a valuation of as much as $170 billion for the company. Even the minimum stake sale could raise roughly $4.3 billion, potentially placing Jio among India’s most valuable listed companies.
Ambani had earlier said that Reliance was targeting a listing of Jio in the first half of 2026, a plan first outlined in 2019 with a five-year timeline. In 2020, global technology groups Meta Platforms and Alphabet invested more than $10 billion combined in the company.
The delay stems from pending regulatory changes approved by the Securities and Exchange Board of India in September. The amendments allow companies with a post-issue market capitalisation exceeding Rs 5 trillion (about $55 billion) to float as little as 2.5 per cent of equity in an IPO, compared with the current 5 per cent minimum.
Such changes are expected to enable mega listings, including potential offerings by Jio and the National Stock Exchange of India. However, the reforms still require formal notification from the government.
Meanwhile, the National Stock Exchange is moving ahead with plans to raise as much as $2.5 billion through its own IPO and has recently invited banks to pitch for roles in the offering.
