Media conglomerate Viacom18 has launched an IVR based voice chat called MTV Gupshup, a mobile content shop called Vh1 Hub and a game for teenage girls called Stardom Saga.

Speaking to Medianama, Rajneel Kumar, Viacom18’s VP and Business Head, Digital Media said that these products have been launched to make their content available to consumers wherever they are, through multiple devices. Owing to the recent challenges in the traditional mobile VAS market in India due to change in guidelines, the company is launching new products to monetise this space better, adds Kumar.

Vh1 Hub:  Vh1 Hub, Vh1′s mobile content shop powered by Techzone, offers its users with songs, ringtones, caller back tunes, videos and wall paper’s on their Vh1 Hub WAP, mobile site and their website. This service is available for Android, Blackberry and Symbian platforms.

When we checked the website we noticed that though people can sample songs and buy them, there is no information at all on the price of each song, caller tune or ringtone. The website also has a super value section, however without mentioning the price of each song, users cannot really find what the value ad is in this section. Even on check out the website does not provide any information about the pricing of the song that you buy. The website mentions that users can SMS Hub to 56882 to set up songs as caller tunes.

It is worth noting that Vh1 had also recently launched a Facebook music streaming app in partnership with Hungama. However, when asked about a streaming service for mobile, Kumar said that they are not currently considering a streaming service as part of their mobile content shop.

MTV Gupshup: The company claims that MTV Gupshup, their IVR based voice powered by Altruist is available in 13 different languages with search filters for age, zone, circle and gender, friendship, flirting and serious relationship. When asked if they are intended to launch a dating service, Kumar said that they see conversations between people happening on the Facebook page and intend to take these conversation forward through their voice chat service. He also added that anonymous option will be available to ensure privacy since call chats can’t be moderated.

Stardom Saga: Stardom saga is a mobile game targeting 13+ teenage girls with smart phones and viewers of their channel, Teen Nick. Available on iPhones, iPads and Android phones, the object of the game is to become a celebrity star. Kumar said that the app targets teenage girls who like to follow the lives of Bollywood and Hollywood stars and also intends to provide an option for advertisers to reach this market out traditional media. Celebrity life based games are among the most common themes of several girl games on the web and mobile.

Monetization: Viacom18 has partnered with all mobile operators through its partners – Altruist and Techzone for both its VAS offerings and will bill customers through the operators. The game is being offered as a freemium app with in-app purchase option.

Other players: Although Viacom18 claims to have evolved new products for the Indian mobile VAS market, there have been other players that have launched mobile content stores. Nokia stores offers music for download through operator billing. Mobile operator, Aircel, had launched a new service called ‘Pocket Music International’ where it offers its subscribers full music track downloads for Rs.5/day.

Saavn has recently partnered with Tata Docomo to launch music-oriented data plans to its 2G and 3G prepaid GSM subscribers. Hungama’s ArtistAloud.com has partnered with Vodafone, Uninor and MTS to allow them offer its service to their respective subscribers. Times Internet’s music streaming service, Gaana* had partneredwith Airtel to allow its users to set their Airtel Hello Tunes, its Caller Ringback Tones (CRBT) service. This partnership however is more of an advertising deal for Gaana.

*Disclosure: Indiatimes, which owns Gaana.com, is also an advertiser with MediaNama.

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Online Indian Media business Rediff.com has reported its 19th straight quarter of losses, despite India Advertising revenues increasing 9% quarter on quarter to $2.33 million, a third consecutive quarter of increase.

The increase was attributed largely to an increase in spends by clients in the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance industries (BFSI) segment – which is normal in Q4 because the insurance sector increases advertises to target Indian taxpayers who buy insurance to reduce tax at the end of the fiscal year; Telecom, Education, Tourism and Real Estate sectors apparently increased spends as well, but “The auto industry have not been visible at all in the last six months,” Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman and CEO of Rediff told MediaNama. Rediff had 207 advertisers, he said, adding that advertising rates have been stable during the quarter. Advertising levels, though “are still lower than pre-recession days.”

Ecommerce

Rediff reported net ecommerce revenues (i.e. not value of goods sold) of $0.6 million for the quarter, up 19% quarter on quarter, and 105% year on year. The year on year growth in net revenues the previous quarter was 95%. Some back of the envelope calculations that we did:

- Gross revenues should have been $5 million for Q4-FY13 (since gross margin = net revenue/gross revenue).
– Net revenue for Q3-FY13 should have been $0.5 million.
– Net revenue for Q4-FY12 should have been $0.29 million.
– Net revenue for Q3-FY12 should have been $0.26 million.

Other notes related to E-Commerce

- Merchants: The total number of merchants in our online marketplace increased from 620 to 701 over the past two quarters

- SKU range has increased from 172,000 to 184,000 to 213,000 over the same period which indicates a 24% increase in our vendor base and 13% growth in SKUs in the past six months.

- “During 2011, there was irrational exhuberance in the Indian ecommerce market. People were selling consistently below cost, and giving away deliveries for free, apart from massive returns. I’ve hear return figures of 30–40%. It took a great amount of self discipline to make sure we didn’t enter into that game. We kept a positive margin, obviously clearly lost marketshare during that period, but our returns were in the 2–3% region right through this period. We have positive margins – 12 percent gross margins on a weighted average basis across all that we do. It took a great amount of courage not to lose out heads. It makes us look like a dull company. Many people told us – you guys were the pioneers of ecommerce in India, why are you not outspending the others. I think it’s important to maintain the discipline in business.”

- “What everybody calls ecommerce, in my head it is not ecommerce. Most people view this as ecommerce. Ecommerce are the people who stock and sell. Some years ago, people asked Meg Whitman, when she was CEO of eBay, and Meg’s answer was we’re a media company, and everyone was astonished. Similarly, our ecommerce execution, people call it a marketplace. But if you’re a small merchant anywhere in India, we’re a platform where you can pay us money and sell your goods. We view this as part of the classifieds and advertising business.”

Financials

- Overall revenues (which include India Online and US Publishing) were $4.18 million for the quarter, down 10% from $4.64 million reported the corresponding quarter last fiscal year, ended March 31, 2012.
- India Online revenues (including advertising) declined 5% to $3.54 million from $3.73 million in Q4 last year. For the full year FY13, Rediff reported India Online revenues of $12.53 million, down 22.45% from $16.22 million in FY12.
- Diversification: Rediff says it is trying to diversify its revenue streams and lessen its dependence on advertising, which has led to an improvement in its India Online business.
- Cost Control: Rediff has controlled costs, resulting in “over 15% lower annual overheads” and “more saving to come later this year” Operating expenses for the quarter were $3.63 million compared to $3.49 million for the same quarter last year. Increase in expenses is due to increased support for e-commerce business.
- US Publishing (India Abroad): Focus in the US business is to drive revenue through conferences. Revenues from US publishing were $0.64 million, as compared to $0.91 million, down 30%
- Fee based revenues were $1.13 million, up 26%
- Gross margin for the quarter was 41%, down from 49% for the same quarter last year. Gross margins are up sequentially.
- Operating EBITDA loss was $1.92 million for the quater, up from loss of $1.20 million for the corresponding quarter last year
- Cash and cash equivalents were $20 million, as of March 2013, as compared to $24 million on March 2012. $3 million was utilized for capital and operating expenditure, while $1 million was adjusted for currency.

Local TV
– Grew 33% quarter on quarter. Note that this is a fairly new business, so the percentage growth will be high on a low base.
– Rediff added 3 more channels to this business: Added 3 more channels during the quarter, namely UTV World Movies UTV Stars and Aaj Tak. Other channels include Zoom, NDTV Good Times, Times Now, ET Now, UTV Movies, Bindass and ABP News.
– Rediff now covers Delhi, Bombay, Pune, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Mysore, Bangalore, Indore, Jaipur, and six cities in Punjab (Chandigarh, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jallandar, Patiala and Bhatinda).
– Rediff says its local TV advertising has the potential to reach 86 million individuals across 16 cities
– A total of 257 local merchants have used the service to advertise on national channels.

Paid Mail

Added two corporate new clients – Metlife and TAC logistics.

Other notes

“Internet users are 160 million, depending on which report you read. Total Internet subscribers are expected to surpass 380 million by 2017, according to a TRAI report. According to the same body, broadband subscribers today account for 15 million. Mobile Internet – it is estimated that around 79 million users access the Internet on the mobile phone, as of October last year, as per IMRB. The same report says that the monthly bills of such users is Rs 460 rupees.”

“Comscore, for April 2013, Indian Internet market is now around 75 million users, with the growth rate of 31% year over year, with 14.6 million active users, we (Rediff) command a 20% share of the Indian Internet market.”

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Rediff.com has sold its stake in Adnear (previously known as Imere), a location based company which it had bought a minority stake in, in 2009, for $1.14 million, Rediff.com has disclosed. In November 2012, AdNear had raised Rs 35 crore (around $6.2 million at current levels) from Sequoia Capital India and Canaan Partners.

AdNear offers location based mobile advertising solutions in India, Singapore, Australia, and other Asia-Pacific countries, and leverages precise location, behaviour, and profiling of consumers, to assist advertisers in reaching relevant audience. At the time that Rediff funded the company, it had among its products, a buddy finder application called Ohe!

Rediff Chairman and Founder Ajit Balakrishnan said that, responding MediaNama’s query on the stake sale on its conference call, that “It started out as a location sensing app on mobile. They have ambitions to grow very fast and they got a couple of big private equity companies to invest. Intially we had thought that we would…our investment has always been strategic, in the sense that if somebody finds success, we expand. We thought we would take a step back, because there is a general re-focusing of everything that we do. Mobile location sensing has other solutions than what Imere has, so I think, we said it’s fine, we wish you well, and we go our separate ways.”

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In fact Gupta recently stated that he will next be restarting the long overdue Sanjay Dutt starrer film Alibaug, post which he will divert his attention to an ‘Epic revenge saga’, which turns out to be the third installment in the Shootout franchise. Further Gupta says that he is looking forward to casting Abhishek Bachchan alongside John Abraham in the film.

Though the film is yet to be titled, we hear that Abhishek will be seen playing the character of a real life Hindu gangster while John’s character will be based on the real encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar. While Abhi and John take the lead, the rest of the cast will comprise of an ensemble crew.
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MakeMyTrip has reported a net loss of $6.5 million for the quarter ending March 31, 2012, as compared to a $3 million profit reported in the corresponding quarter last year. This was on a Net Revenues (Revenue less service costs) of $21.77 million, down 1.4% from $22.1 million revenues in the same quarter last year.

For the year ending March 31, 2013, MakeMyTrip reported a net loss of $6.04 million for FY13, a significant decline from $9.3 million profit in the previous fiscal. Net Revenues (Revenue less service costs) stood at $88.17 million, a minor dip from $88.18 million revenues in the previous fiscal.

The company reported a gross booking of $311.7 million for the quarter ending March 31, 2012, up 26.4% year over year (YoY) from gross booking of $246.5 million in the corresponding quarter last year. For the fiscal FY13, the company saw a gross booking of $1.17 billion, a 17.8% growth from $992.95 million in FY12.

Segment Revenues

Air Ticketing Revenues Decline: Revenue from Air Ticketing significantly declined by 26.3% YoY to $13.14 million for the quarter, down from $20.9 million in Q4-FY12. This was despite a 16.6% increase YoY in gross bookings to $248.88 million for the quarter and a 13% increase YoY in transactions to 1.05 million for the quarter. The net revenue margins declined to 6% from 9% a year ago due to the reduction in airlines commission.

For the fiscal FY13, the Air ticketing revenues declined by 14.3% to $56.77 million, down from $66.25 million revenues in FY12. This was despite a 12% growth in gross bookings to $939.6 million and a 2.1% increase in transactions to 3.79 million.

Hotels and Packages Revenues Increase: The hotels and packages business however provided respite for the company, posting a 141.6% YoY increase in revenues to $7.70 million for the quarter, up from $3.19 million in Q4-FY12. The gross bookings increased by 89.3% to $62.8 million and the transactions increased by 97.1% to 0.17 million transactions. Net revenue margins increased to 12.3% from 9.6% a year ago. MakeMyTrip noted that this increase was aided by the acquisition of Hotel Travel Group and ITC Group in the previous quarter.

For the fiscal FY13, the Hotel and packages revenues increased by 51.4% to $27.59 million, up from $18.23 million in FY12. The gross bookings increased by 49.6% to $229.92 million and the transactions increased by 65.6% to 0.57 million transactions.

Other Revenue: Other revenues declined by 12.9% to $0.93 million for the quarter, down from $1.07 million revenues in the same quarter last year. The company attributed the decline to lower advertisement revenue from its websites. For the fiscal FY13, the other revenues however increased by 2.6% to $3.8 million, up from $3.71 million in FY12.

Highlights

- MakeMyTrip had partnered with OneAssist Consumer Solutions to offer travel assistance and protection products to its customers.

- It had introduced Apple Passbook integration for its flight bookings earlier this month. It had informed that these passes will also offer Flight reminders to Passbook users.

Download – Press Release

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