Global Takeoff, a city-based provider of converged digital entertainment, communication and advertising, is in the process of raising a $10-million (approximately Rs 46 crore) venture capital fund to take its technologies to the next level.
“We are in talks with two VCs – one in the US and the other in India – and should be receiving funds in three months from now, which will be primarily used to scale up marketing, acquire premium content such as new movies and expand our R&D to make sure that the technologies are stable and can be extended to any other parts of the world,” Uday Reddy, chairman and chief executive, told Business Standard.
Global Takeoff offers two products – Freedocast.com, a portal to live broadcast user-generated and premium content, and YuppTV.com that offers live streaming of Indian and international television channels on the Internet.
“For YuppTV, we are extremely focused on the mobile market in India. The penetration of smartphones in the country is increasing and the big bottleneck of GPRS is going to go away with the 3G regime, which will bring in more niche mobile-enabled services. Today, GPRS penetration is 20 per cent and 3G will add 20 per cent to this. There will be a 50-million target base for such services in the next two years, a big market opportunity for companies like us,” Reddy added.
At present, YuppTV offers close to 30 channels and is planning to extend this to 50 by the end of this month in languages like Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi and Hindi, and add a bouquet of 10 Tamil channels in July. It currently has a registered database of 500,000 customers, mostly from outside of India.
“We are in negotiations with all the mobile carriers in the country and will be offering a turn-key solution to them by combining mobile TV and an advertising delivery platform in the next three months.”
On the Freedocast.com front, Reddy said, the company was looking at incorporating new verticals like education, especially delivering interactive education on IIT targeted at Tier-II cities in the country, besides creating a platform for content providers on a revenue-sharing basis.
“We have already approached the UGC and the Triumphant Institute of Management Education. The new initiative will take off next month,” he said. The company would focus on the expatriate communities in the US, Caribbean and Latin American markets for Freedocast.
“Our current revenues are still cash-flow positive. Between Freedocast and YuppTV, we foresee revenue streams of $150 million (Rs 690 crore) over a period of three years,” he said.
