Another print medium journalist bites the dot com bullet. Managing editor of Outlook newsmagazine, Tarun Tejpal, has quit to start tehelka.com, claimed to be India‘s first independent news portal.

Tehelka Communications Ltd, the company that will manage the affairs of tehelka.com, will have majority shareholding by the Tejpals (52.5 per cent), while 25 per cent will be held by adman Suhel Seth.

"It‘s an ambitious project and we are looking at a really comprehensive horizontal portal which will not only provide news, but also information on issues like literature, etc.," Tehelka Communications‘ chief executive Tarun Tejpal said, claiming it will be India‘s first independent news portal.

The board of this new dotcom company will include illustrious personalities like Khushwant Singh, R.K. Laxman, V.S. Naipaul and Russi Mody.

In the initial phase the investment to be made in tehelka.com project is to the tune of approximately $ 2 million. The project, likely to be up by mid-May, is looking at attracting investments up to $ 10 million by second quarter of this year. According to Suhel Seth, involved in this venture in his personal capacity, tehelka.com will cater to both the high and low brow as it will have the zing necessary to attract hits. Though Seth was unwilling to divulge more financial details, IT industry sources said that venture capital funding will be tapped too. "In the initial phase about 10 per cent is likely to be offloaded to the venture capital fund which invests in the company," a source close to Tehelka Communications said, adding, "Talks are already on with a Mumbai-based VCF."

A certain quantum of the equity stake in the company has been reserved for the employees stock option plan (ESOP), Tejpal said. This has been necessitated as some of the finest brains in journalism will be joining the project, including some from Outlook magazine.

Tehelka.com is looking at having more than one model for generating revenue. One is the traditional one of making the site and detailed information susbcription-based. Another stream of revenue being looked at is facilitating downloading of magazines and excerpts from yet-to-be-published books for a price.

But tehelka.com will have to face competition from existing news sites and portals like india-today.com and indiatimes.com and some like GO4i (go for India) which are in the offing and backed by big media houses.

For example, in a two-pronged Internet strategy, The Hindustan Times Ltd, through an offshore company, based in the United States, has formed a joint venture with Chase Capital Partners with equal equity participation from both for development of a horizontal portal, tentatively called GO4i (go for India).

The fate of the broadcast bill hangs on a razor‘s edge, despite Braodcast Minister Arun Jaitley‘s pledge to table it in the surrent budget session of parliament.
Lobbying for the Broadcast bill is expected to reach fever pitch after March during the Budget session recess. The broadcasters lobby group, The Indian Broadcast Foundation has set up three committees for the purpose. Discovery India‘s Kiran Karnik, News Television India‘s Peter Mukherjee and Urmila Gupta, and Sony Entertainment Television‘s Kunal Dasgupta are looking at convergence and spectrum allocation issues. ESPN‘s Manu Sawney and Turner International‘s Anshuman Misra are reviewing technology convergence, especially the last mile infrastructure. Content provider UTV‘s Ronnie Screwvala and Khursheeda Mody, Nimbus Communications? Harish Thawani and MTV India‘s Alex Kuruvilla are looking at Internet regulatory issues. Three government committees are also reviewing critical areas in the bill.

Jaitley expects to reach a consensus during the recess before tabling the bill in parliament. Some analysts believe that foreign equity in cross media holding and DTH may not form a part of the bill, plagued by opposing political viewpoints. Others indicate that the bill may be tabled, but will go into a sub committee for further review.

The ad industry seems to have no qualms about the recent budget. Industry professionals believe that the recent excise hike that the budget imposed on several categories of goods, among which figure FMCGs, automotive and consumer durables, is unlikely to prove a dampener to advertising fortunes in the coming year.
In the past a rapid rampup of prices courtesy government levies has led to slow offtake of goods which in turn has led to a reduction in ad spend by advertisers. Ad agencies have in the process seen their billings dry up.

Industry professionals however don‘t think the scenario will be replicated this time around. Says Saatchi & Saatchi media head T.V. Shivkumar: "The hike in excise rates won‘t in anyway have an effect on the ad spend of companies. There is no blanket increase in the price of commodities. The ad spend has got more to do with the bottomline of the company, whether it is able to keep its commitment with its shareholders."

What needs to be seen is whether consumers will react similarly to the situation. Will they cut back or postpone consumption like they did in the early nineties which led to reduced ad expenditures? If they do react negatively, the ad industry will be caught unawares like in the nineties when they overstaffed and overcommitted resources in the hope of good economic growth.

Star TV India is on the prowl for a dot com chief. The company is scouting around for an individual who will steer its forway in to the Wide World of the Web and e-shopping and communities. It is beleived to be in conversation with several senior executives and placement agencies have been roped in to lasso the right candidate for the job.
The company already has a portal startv.com. It plans to create many more portals and has set up a subsidiary for the Internet business, which will also offer Internet access. It is looking for partners in New Delhi to provide broadband Internet access through cable networks.

The company plans to get into the broadband area and offer webcasting services.Star TV CEO Peter Mukerjea does not want to miss the bus which the arch rival Zee Telefilms has already boarded. Zee Telefilms has a clear advantage with its own cable network SitiCable. It is already conducting pilot projects in Bangalore and Mumbai for Internet over cable.

Star expects to also form a community of Internet portals which it will likely offer along with access. The company is also looking at forging alliances with existing portals by taking equity positions in dot com startupps.

The Hinduja-run cable TV service IN CableNet today denied allegations about the pressure tactics used by them in the Sion-Matunga-King Circle area in Mumbai that made 32 of its operators shift loyalties to the rival SitiCable. Mr Hingorani, CEO of IndusInd Media and Communications said "The allegation is baseless and malicious. We don‘t use any force or pressure tactics and would never do so."
Company officials said that IN CableNet had set up a state-of-the-art control room in King‘s Circle in Mumbai and six small time cable ops who were unable to match the level of service decided to part ways.The company claimed that the allegations of browbeating and bullying and were made by a couple of ops who had defrauded the company of Rs 5 million and that police cases had been filed against them.

The cable war will spread in the country and such incidents will be frequent. Every MSO claims to be non-political and non-goon based. If that was the scenario why do the skirmishes keep popping up every now and then?