NEW DELHI: On the 25th day of the e-auction for the first batch of FM Phase III cities, the surprise came from the North East where one channel in Guwahati fetched a price of Rs 4.07 crore as against its reserve price of just Rs 37 lakh, registering an increase of a whopping 976 per cent.

It may be recalled that a few days earlier, Bhubaneswar also set a record with a single channel getting the most competitive bidding increment-wise by going up nine times the reserve price.

On the other hand, after Varanasi (at Rs 12.29 crore today), it now looks like Jodhpur’s turn to enter the Rs 10 crore club in the e-auction as it showed an increase to Rs 9.22 crore. Even as the hope for revenue continues to rest on cities racing to the Rs 10 crore mark, the cumulative winning price at the end of the 100th round on the 25th day went up to Rs 1147 crore.

However, there has been no increase for almost a week in the number of provisional winning channels and cities - 94 channels in 56 cities – though the total bids surpassed the cumulative reserve price by Rs 688.3 crore or 150 per cent against the aggregate reserve price of about Rs 459 crore.

The cumulative provisional winning price has thus risen over the total reserve price of the first batch of 135 FM channels in 69 existing cities - Rs 550.18 crore – by Rs 597 crore or 108.5 per cent.  

Kohlapur has now been static for a few days with Rs 9.44 crore and others waiting to enter the Rs 10 crore club appear to be Kanpur, Rajkot, Amritsar and Aurangabad, which have all got above Rs 6 crore. 

Bid continue to elude 13 cities namely Asansol, Gulbarga, Mangalore, Mysore, Puducherry, Rajahmundry, Siliguri, Tiruchy, Tirunveli, Tirupati, Tuticorin, Vijaywada and Warangal even now.

The demand in most cities fell by up to three per cent and by four per cent below the excess demand at the price in the 100th round in Hyderabad.

The Percentage Price Increment applicable for the Next Clock Round rose to five each in Shillong and Varanasi but was just one in Guwahati and Jodhpur. There was no change in the other cities.

The winning price has risen by more than 100 per cent above their respective reserve prices in Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Aurangabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kolhapur, Mumbai, Nasik, Patna, Pune, Rourkela and Varanasi, all of which got provisional winning bidders at prices more than double the respective reserve prices.

The provisional winning price in the top three cities reflected no change: Delhi at Rs 169.16 crore (for just one channel), Mumbai at Rs 122.81 crore (for two channels) and Bengaluru at Rs 109.25 crore.

Chennai at Rs 53.38 crore, Ahmedabad at Rs 42.68 crore, Pune at Rs 42.03 crore, Jaipur at Rs 28.34 crore, Chandigarh at Rs 19.04 crore, Hyderabad at Rs 18 crore, Patna at Rs 17.89 crore, Cochin at Rs 15.04 crore, Nasik at Rs 14.66 crore and Lucknow at Rs 14 crore remained static.

Auction will now resume on Monday, 31 August.