If you thought politicians, party spokesmen and election analysts are a busy lot these days shuttling among television news channels, you must meet Tushar Kothari. The 37-year-old director of Beehive Systems, the tiny (Rs 10 crore), low-profile, software applications and services company in Noida, is busier than most, running from one TV news channel to another. You will not see him on screen, though. Instead, Kothari and his team are offering channels software tools to capture 'live' data (read: election results) and put them on air as soon as possible. "Yes, it is a very busy period for us and we are signing up with some channels which will use our teams to capture and analyse data," admits the young director. The company will offer software tools to update the complex poll data generated from the 540 constituencies for viewers.
"Obviously, you can't start typing in the results," he laughs.
Needless to say, with the proliferation of news channels since the last general elections in 1999, Beehive Systems is on a roll. Over the years, it has worked with almost all major news channels in the country selling sophisticated end-to-end solutions to them.
When TV Today launched Aaj Tak as a full-fledged news channel in 2000, Beehive Systems was hired to create its news gathering software. TV Today's executive director G Krishnan says that the channel still uses the company's services. "They are an innovative lot," he remarks. Among its innovative software products are digital video systems, digital content management, automated data graphics and custom software solutions.
Vid'link is among the company's branded products, bought by Eenadu TV and Aaj Tak. This electronically transmits footage from a news bureau to the central production centre over ISDN, V-Sat and so on. It uses MPEG1 and MPEG2 compression standards. The Vid'link mobile is a portable lap-top-based news gathering solution that transmits high quality video over low bandwidths. Recently, the company launched Live Burst, an IP-based, KU band solution useful for for live coverage at places where OB vans cannot go.
"We are constantly innovating and upgrading our products," says Ajay Pal Singh, the company's vice president, business development. Singh, who quit ESPN-Star Sports to join Beehive three years back, says that the company is aiming at a 100 per cent increase in turnover to Rs 20 crore in 2004-2005.
A clutch of new initiatives, he hopes, will bring this about. For starters, the company is eyeing the upcoming news and business channels. For the entertainment segment too, it has launched a new playout server, Odyssey, a hard disk-based programme that eliminates the need for video tapes in a channel. Singh expects the smaller Indian channels such as Sab TV and Aastha to opt for Odyssey as its foreign counterparts made by companies like Leitch and GVG cost Rs 40 lakh. "We offer the same system for Rs 10-15 lakh," Singh claims.
The company is also eyeing the US market for the first time. "A majority of television stations in the US are still not digital, unlike India," he notes. To tap the over 1,700 analogue television stations in the US, Beehive has tied up with an American company, Signasys.
Kothari is also eyeing business from telcos like Reliance Infocomm and the Bharati group. For a video-on-demand service, for example, software will be required to retrieve a film from the server and reach it to the viewers. "That is where we will come in and write applications," says Kothari.
Kothari and his partner Ganesh Rajamani, both Banaras Hindu University engineers, got their first opportunity to write television software application in 1997, when Prannoy Roy requested a news gathering software for NDTV's debut on Star News. That proved to be the turning point. Today, the company is looking beyond broadcasters. It has been approached by the Army and the BSF and the Indian Railways to develop a disaster management system. "Curr-ently these organisations gather news from the TV channels and want their personal monitoring networks," explains Kothari.
In 1998, Beehive Systems had barely 5-6 employees. Today it has 70. Clearly, the broadcast industry's backroom boys are making news.
