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UTVi plans regional vortals

Our Bureau

BANGALORE Nov. 22

AFTER the successful launch of its regional portals in Tamil and Gujarati -- Tamizha-Tamizha.com and Kemchho.com -- UTV Interactive (UTVi), a UTV Group company, is planning to launch portals in other south Indian languages.

UTVi, which spearheads the Internet initiatives of UTV Group, is planning portals in Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, as well as in Bengali and Punjabi, Mr Biren Ghose, CEO, UTVi, said.

According to him, the regional language vortals would be launched in partnership with local content providers.

``The company is on the lookout for tie-ups with content providers such as media houses and local television channels and hopes to launch the new portals by second quarter next year.''

The company, which has infrastructure already in place, is looking at an investment of close to Rs 1 crore in each of these vortals.

Through the Telugu and Malayalam vortals, UTVi is targeting the expat population in the US and Gulf, Mr. Ghose said.

Meanwhile, the company is also planning to launch the services of its Singapore-based subsdiary Sharkstream.com in Korea and expand it in India through alliances with the broadband service providers.

Sharkstream.com is a content aggregator providing video-on-demand services to Asian consumers through video and audio streaming.

Sharkstream, which launched its services in India recently, has a subscriber base of about 400 in Mumbai. ``We are targeting a subscription base of a quarter million in India by June 2001.''