| Mumbai:
Star-promoted
indya.com will cease to be a horizontal portal and will just function as the
network's information support for all its television programming, marking a
major retrenchment of media mogul Rupert Murdoch's Internet plans in the
country.
Star, which acquired indya.com from Pradeep Kar promoted-Microland, has
decided to strip the portal of all its services including chats and e-mails. In
a related development, indya.com chief executive officer Sunil Rajasekhar, along
with most of the staff, has been asked to put in his papers. Mr KV Anand, who
handles IT, is expected to head the streamlined staff of around five people. "We
will not be replacing Mr Rajasekhar. We are heavily downscaling the staff and it
will be restricted to a bare minimum," said a source close to the company. Mr
Rajsekhar could not be contacted on Wednesday as he was on leave.
With no flow in revenue streams, Star was forced to take the dramatic
decision after acquiring the portal from Microland. indya.com will be run with a
"maintenance kind of staff" to operate as Star's television channels support
website. News, e-commerce, broadband and all other channels which are not
related to Star's television business will be scrapped. "It will be like a
department within Star and will be related to activities in the network's
television properties including programme schedules and story synopsis," the
source said.
The transition from a full-fledged portal to only a Star information site
will take a few months. Star will withdraw all services offered on indya.com.
The portal had several channels like astrology, auctions, shopping, property,
dating, tickets and travel.
Star acquired the entire majority stake of the Pradeep Kar-promoted Microland
Group in the general purpose Internet portal, holding almost 98 per cent with
institutions like ICICI holding the balance.
Subsequently, indya's management team including chief executive officer Sunil
Lulla and about 80 per cent of its staff had to resign. Mr Rajasekhar replaced
Mr Lulla as CEO and was also looking at Star's Internet ventures. Star had shut
its own online ventures like V india and merged all its Indian Internet
operations into indya.com. Source: The Financial Express
|
