Mumbai: That India’s cable TV digitization drive in phases is going to soak up a lot of investment – running into a few billion dollars - is well known. Some of the MSOs have been working to stay ahead of their capital requirement curve. Take national MSO DEN Networks founded and led by former TV executive Sameer Manchanda.

It has a presence in roughly 11 million households in over 150 cities across 13 key states in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Kerala, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The MSO has been at the forefront of digitising cable TV nationally since mid-last year and with the next phase of digitization into smaller towns going on and expected to intensify in the next year, it desperately requires cash.

And it is reaching out to foreign institutional investment to meet that need. It announced on 6 May that it had got board approval to sell equity to raise about $160 million. This was communicated to the stock exchanges on 6 May.

Part of that will be raised through a preferential equity allotment to Goldman Sachs’ Singapore registered affiliates Broad Street Investments and MBD Bridge Street 2013 Investments for a total amount of $110 million at a issue price of 217.50 per share (face value: Rs 10).

The allotment is of course subject to shareholder and other regulatory approvals.

In addition to this, it got the board’s go-ahead for a qualified institutional placement plan to qualified institutional buyers for raising another $50 million at a price of Rs 217.23 per share.

DEN had got board approval in end March to divest 26 per cent of its paid up share capital.

An April end extra ordinary general meeting saw it getting shareholder approval for increasing its FII limit. Earlier this year, it had doubled its borrowing powers from Rs 1000 crore.

The company’s share rose 2.14 per cent at its closing price of Rs 226.75 on the BSE on 6 May.