Assess yourself before investing – use UTVi Money, says the the Headline in red on Afaqs about UTVi’s new money management tool. Ironically, the business portal arm of UTV also finds itself in a position where others might have to assess it before investing.
UTVi.com has launched UTVi Money, a tool that allows a user to compare his investments within and across asset classes, and also within and across indices. The tool can be accessed from http://www.utvi.com/utvi-money/compare-investments.html. According to the report UTVi Money is the first tool in India to allow for a simultaneous performance comparison of up to eight assets – from various combinations of stocks, mutual funds and commodities over a period of five years.
Business rivals ET had launched a portfolio management tool last year, while CNBC’s moneycontrol.com the largest finance and business portal already had tool similar to ET’s. A comparision tool nevertheless is definitely innovative and the pitch is to make it seem handier than a portfolio management tool. Given the current market scenario such a tool certainly seems appropriate. However, is it enough to drive the hordes of traffic it is certainly intended to push? Moreover, a portal like moneycontrol was built on the premise of being a forum and hence has its loyal users who have built their profiles on the site over the years and in general MC has a higher recall among investors compred to UTVi. In such a situation even a handy tool might not be enough to pull people from one website and make them active on the other.
The success of this and perhaps any other feature they introduce is very important for UTVi if some other news is to be beleived. According to another report, they are in hunt for a strategic partner (investor) to push up the funds in the business. Apparently, the company is looking at raising between Rs 100 crore and Rs 125 crore from the strategic partner on a valuation of about Rs 200 crore. Currently the existing promoters have invested around Rs 170 crore through equity and debt.
The stake sale is to raise funds for UTVi the business channel whose revenues have been hit enough to make it take losses of nearly 5 crores every month. Finance being one of the more lucrative and web friendly niches with regards to content and traffic UTVi has its holdings right. However, the competition it faces from web18 and Bennet & Coleman both in terms of web as well as TV ratings is huge, perhaps signalling the need to up the ante.
Currently Ronnie Screwalla owns around 80% of the company and perhaps is looking to offload a significant bit of it with this initiative. It might also seem to be an exit strategy for a business that has become a cost centre and clearly not working to the tune they expected it to play. Is this the first big fall of media in India caused by the recession?
