iVision, IANS plan to jointly spread wings

"We will also expand our presence to another six international destinations and significant investments will be made in setting up infrastructure such as leased circuits and other terrestrial data transmission media. The objective is to reach our footage to any part of the world within a couple of hours after an event happens," Atluri Krishna Prasad, director of iVision told Business Standard. However, he declined to reveal the investment figures for the expansion plans.

"We want to emerge as a world class news organisation and value added information service provider for the south Asian region and our focus is not on revenues but on providing quality content," Prasad said. "We will have generic content posted on our website, ivisionnews.net, which can be accessed by all free of cost. Even non-media organisations can avail our services," he added.

The expansion will be restricted to countries and continents where there is a substantial concentration of South Asian diaspora, he said. Initially, the two companies will be run as separate legal entities while operationally they will function as one organisation.

Each of iVision's centres will have a camera person and a journalist while the bigger centres will have a bureau. Apart from retaining the existing IANS team, more manpower would be recruited, he said.

iVision, with its headquarters in New Delhi and technical support centre in Hyderabad, plans to have presence in every district of the country in due course.

"Srini Raju is keen on grooming the company as a premier news agency in the country and the acquisition of IANS will help achieve his ambition," a source commented.