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Technology Stocks : Satyam Infoway Ltd-(Nasdaq:SIFY) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (987)	3/2/2000 3:15:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1471

OT Morgan Stanley shells out $11.5m for 7% in indiainfo Govindraj Ethiraj MUMBAI 2 MARCH MORGAN Stanley Dean Witter (MSDW) has invested $11.5m (Rs 50 crore) for a seven per cent stake in internet services and portal company indiainfo.com, valuing the company at $164m (Rs 706 crore), the highest ever for a business of this nature. Confirming the move, indianfo chairman Raj Koneru told ET that his company was set to raise another $3.5m from strategic investors and business partners including, possibly, a private sector bank that he was in talks with. "This is the only round of funding we are doing. We are following this up with a Nasdaq Initial Public Offer (IPO), hopefully by mid-April," the New Jersey-based Mr Koneru said. MSDW's New York offices have already secured the investment banking mandate for the offer, while MSDW?s asset management arm invested in the company, Mr Koneru added. The funds raised will go towards marketing and development costs, Mr Koneru said. Indiainfo is already in the midst of a high decibel, pan-India, advertising campaign believed to be costing close to Rs 30 crore. Last month, indiainfo ran an aggressive hoarding campaign in Mumbai, snapping up almost all the key sites on the city's arterial roads. Indiainfo is also in talks to buy out India Abroad, an ethnic Indian newspaper and wire services agency, based in New York, with syndication arrangements with over 65 newspapers in India. Mr Koneru said that eventually, indiainfo would create some 24 revenue streams, including from stockbroking and business to consumer commerce. "We want to cross promote and cross sell across our portal. For instance, you can buy a ticket on our online travel section and get a discount for some product in the mall and so on. Or, for instance, you do a certain amount of business on the ebroking front and you get concessions elsewhere in indiainfo," he said. Indiainfo says it is set to acquire close to seven companies, one of which is a big Mumbai based information vending call-centre. "I can't disclose the name now as it is not a done deal but this acquisition will give us a big direct marketing channel for our B2C business," Mr Koneru said. The company says last year's revenues in the region of $12m were generated largely from services like web-hosting. "Around 40 of those revenues came from India." Some 750 people already work with indiainfo in its offices in India and the US. Indiainfo is also in the process of consolidating into itself the privately-owned businesses owned by two co-founders, B G Mahesh and Madhu Kodali. Mr Kodali owned, for instance, Kodenet Inc, a company which hosts over 600 Indian websites in the US, including, All India Radio and Doordarshan. Mr Koneru earlier co founded the $200m, Nasdaq-listed Intelligroup Inc, an e-business solution and package implementation company. Intelligroup was set up by Mr Koneru and two other Indians, one of them being Arjun Valluri, now Intelligroup's chairman. All three, incidentally, studied at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) at Pilani, Rajasthan. Mr Koneru is also CEO of SeraNova, a now spun off subsidiary of Intelligroup Inc. The New Jersey headquartered SeraNova is a broad-based internet solutions company. Intelligroup's India development centre is located at Hyderabad. - Economic Times