Ambani Power to fuel Reliance Comm, eyes India Today?

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Ambani Power to fuel Reliance Comm, eyes India Today?

Despite having all these and much more, there is one chink in the Reliance armour - the print media, which matters the most for the masses and the classes. Ambani is believed to be eyeing the India Today group for the same reason.

CJ: Abu Sheikh

Mon, Jan 21, 2008 16:24:57 IST

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Anil Ambani :

AFTER THE listing of Reliance Power, it is being rumoured that Anil Ambani is going to be the richest man in the world. But for him being rich, producing power, selling mobiles is not enough. The media savvy Ambani wants to create a fully integrated media empire, which will rule the waves.

Reliance Entertainment, which is spearheading the Ambani groups foray into this business, has already created a cross-holding media empire in a span of few years. However, to give a further push and to become a part of the mainline media, it is believed that company is planning to go both for organic and inorganic growth.

Industry sources reveal that Reliance is planning to enter television entertainment and news business in a big way and the company would leverage brand ‘BIG’ for this purpose.

With huge cash pile in the bank and ability to bet on the winners, the company is said to have set its eyes on a mid-level media group and the bait is being cast. There is strong emphasis to buy stake or collaborate with someone having strong presence in the print media, sources added.

Big TV, Big news, digital media, multiplexes, gaming and videos are some of the plans already executed or in the pipeline or already executed by the ADAG (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group), wanting to skim the Indian media industry growing at a skyrocketing speed.

Within a span of one year in 2005, Ambani took a majority stake Bollywood major Adlabs, set up shop for FM radio stations and entered into digital media industry, including Internet and mobile portals.

Big 92.7 FM, the flagship FM radio service, has been rolled out in 45 cities and the group claims that soon the reach will increase to 200 million people across the country. Big FM has enabled the group to reach out to masses in tier II cities along with metros.

To be a top media player, Ambani will have to achieve full forward and backward integrations and distribution of content will be the key in this regard. Reliance Entertainment is leading the group’s foray in this regard to distribute content in areas such as gaming, movies, animation and so and so forth.

A major feather in Amabani’s nascent media empire is ‘Zapak’, which the company claims to be India’s number one gaming portal. Zapak acquired more than one million registered users in the first four months of its launch. The current registered user base exceeds three million.

Heading its foray into the movie rental and download industry is BigFlicks.com, which plans to cater to both domestic and NRI community. The company is also scaling its infrastructure to meet the demands of the customers and large stores and online database are in the offing.

To give India its own social networking platform, the Reliance group is offering BigAdda.com. Built on Web 2.0 initiative, the BigAdda offers a user friendly option to Indian net users vis a vis sites like Orkut, Facebook and Myspace.

This is not the end. Ambani has in his kitty Big Motion Pictures, which has world-class production facilities and a production pipeline that is full to the brim. The company claims that it will redefine the movie viewing as well movie-making experience in the country.

Not to be left behind in the highly paying and fast growing animation industry, Big Animation, has set up a state-of-the-art studio in Pune. It aims to create next-generation animation for theatre, television, direct-to-home and other platforms.

To complement the production and distribution game, Big Music and Home Entertainment plans to focus on digital platforms such as the Internet, mobile and radio networks, in addition to traditional physical formats.

However, despite having all this and much more, there is one chink in the Reliance armour, which the group is trying to get rid of. And you guessed it right! In a country where the electronic media and news channels are growing like Congress Grass, it’s still the print media that matters the most for the masses and the classes. To remove this lacuna in its bouquet, industry insiders said that Reliance has cast its eye on the India Today group, owned by Living Media. Ambani is believed to be ready to either buy out or collaborate with India Today, which is owned by Aroon Purie. But, collaborating with the dinosaur is akin to suicide. Time will tell, which ways the wind blows.

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