A group of investors, led by Vinay Chhajlani, CEO of Webdunia.com India Pvt Ltd, and Jehangir S Pocha, former editor of Businessworld, has bought INX News, the company that runs the English news channel NewsX. Chhajlani and Pocha have formed a company called Indi Media for the purpose. Though the size of the deal is not known, media industry sources peg it at roughly Rs 50 crore.
Confirming the development, Peter Mukerjea, chairman of the INX group, told Business Standard: “We did not have the cash to continue funding the English news channel and were looking for an exit. We have now managed to do that.”
However, INX continues to be in the broadcasting business through INX Media, which operates a music channel and a Hindi general entertainment channel.
INX Media, funded by Temasek Holdings through Dunearn Investments, NSR PE of New Silk Route Partners, Kotak Mahindra Capital, New Vernon Private Equity and SREI, had a 26 per cent stake in INX News, with the majority shareholding being with the single Indian entity IM Media Private Ltd, owned by Indrani Mukerjea, founder and CEO of INX Media.
Media industry experts say the “low-value” purchase” fits in with Chhajlani’s new-found aggression in the media business. Established in 1947, today the newspaper company has two publications, Nai Dunia and Nav Dunia, with a combined circulation of 600,000 copies a day in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It launched a Delhi edition of the newspaper recently. A weekly Hindi newspaper called Sunday Navi Dunia will soon be launched in nine state capitals including Lucknow, Patna, Ranchi, Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai and Jaipur, among others.
The group also owns Webdunia, the largest multilingual portal available in nine languages. With an email service in 11 languages, it gets 80 million page-views a month.
According to independent media consultant Sanjay Salil, whose company Mediaguru specialises in setting up news channels, “the sale of NewsX is a precursor to a few more such deals. At least a couple of other news channels are also on the block. However, the question is if there are enough buyers in the market at this stage.”
Currently, television news is a Rs 1,000-crore business, with most news channels witnessing a decline in advertising revenues in the last few months.
