Murdoch on Star India 2.0

Businessworld has an interview with Rupert Murdoch on his latest plans for India.

You have a DTH success story in BSkyB. What has been the experience in India like?
Tata Sky has become a great brand, but it is going to be very competitive. There are Reliance and Bharti coming in; there are many who would like to provide these services. In three or four years, we will see some consolidation. Some will lose money, others will say they are investing money because they are expanding. And then we will see who will tire first. It has been a two-player market in the US, but otherwise you rarely see more than one player in most markets.

...China and India have both been great growth stories, but for News Corp. and Star, India’s performance has been way ahead of China. What happened?
China does not like foreign media. Period. We tried and tried; and we tried to get joint ventures going; ... then there was a change of regime and we closed down. We are standing by now to see what happens. India has a huge advantage. It is a working democracy, there is rule of law, and you know where you stand. India has been a great experience. Yes, 60-70 per cent of Star’s cake is out of India, and... it will be maintained...

You own a huge chunk of media worldwide spanning television, publishing, and now digital platforms. While these companies do good business, they also give you a lot of power to shape public opinion. How do you exercise this power?
With the power comes great responsibility. It is not uniform. Take Star Plus. The channel can hardly be said to shape opinion. Globally, we try very, very hard to be absolutely objective in news coverage. We don’t stop having opinions on the pages that are meant for that, and strong opinions at that. We fight very hard for open and free markets within countries, and globally.

Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.

EY Tops League Table for Transaction Advisors to M&A deals in 24

Moelis & Company & PwC claim the No.2 & No.3 slots Ernst & Young (EY) topped the Venture Intelligence League Table for Transaction Advisor to M&A Deals during 2024, advising 34 deals worth $4.1 Billion. Moelis & Company stood second advising 2 deals worth $3.9 billion. PwC followed with 18 deals worth $3.3 billion. Citi ($2.5 billion across 1 deal) and Advay Capital ($2.3 billion across 1 deal) completed the top five. Among the largest M&A deals in 2024, Citi advised $2.5 Billion acquisition of the Indian business of American Tower Corporation by Brookfield , Advay Capital and Moelis & Company advised the $2.3 Billion acquisition of Care Hospitals by Aster DM Healthcare . Jefferies & Co., JP Morgan and Moelis & Company advised the $1.6 Billion acquisition of Bharat Serums & Vaccines by Mankind Pharma. Among the other notable M&A deals in Q4 2024, EY advised the $685 million acquisition of ITD Cementation ...

Morgan Stanley tops League Table for Transaction Advisors to M&A deals in 2020

Morgan Stanley , which advised the $10.1 Billion strategic investment by Facebook and Google into Reliance Industries' telecom arm Jio platforms (among other Private Equity investments in the company), topped the Venture Intelligence League Table for Transaction Advisor to M&A Deals for 2020. Ambit Corporate Finance - which advised 3 deals worth $4.0 Billion, including Brookfield's $3.7 Billion acquisition of Reliance Tower Infrastructure Trust - took the second spot. JM Financial ($3.7 Billion across 5 deals), Metta Capital ($3.4 Billion across 3 deals) and ICICI Securities ($3.4 Billion across 2 deals) - all of whom (along with Citi) are advisors to the $3.4 Billion acquisition of Future Group's retail related ventures by Reliance Retail, announced in August - completed the top five. The Venture Intelligence League Tables , the first such initiative exclusively tracking transactions involving India-based companies, are based on the value of PE and M&A tra...

Everything you wanted to know (and some things you didn't care to know) about ChrysCapital's Ashish Dhawan

New Delhi-based private equity fund ChrysCapital is vastly different from its former avatar, Chrysalis Capital. While Chrysalis began life (in Mumbai) as an venture capital firm focussed on start-up investments, today's ChrysCapital is best know for its late-stage investments (often in already public companies). The fascinating part of this transformation is that one of the fund's original partners - Senior Managing Director Ashish Dhawan - has been firmly in the driver's seat throughout the process. It's a story that needed to be told. As a cover story. Kudos to Business Today for telling it first. Thankfully, unlike the glowing profiles that BT is famous for - including the one featuring infamous stock brocker Harshad Mehta with his Lexus on the cover - this one has a lot of facts. Some well known. And others less so. That ChrysCapital's first fund would have been a disaster but for the pioneering investment in Raman Roy founded BPO firm Spectramind i...

VC Interview: Shailendra Singh of Sequoia Capital India

In a recent interview to Venture Intelligence, Shailendra Singh discussed some of the firm’s newer investments in the early stage segment including in the online payments space, the progress at a few existing portfolio companies and the active role the firm is playing in helping its portfolio companies scale and succeed in India and globally. Prior to joining the firm in 2006, Singh was a strategy consultant at Bain & Company in New York and before that, an entrepreneur in the digital media industry. Venture Intelligence: How does Sequoia go about identifying potential early stage investments in India? Is there anything different you are doing today than, say, a couple of years back? Shailendra Singh: There is a lot more focus on technology investing and early stage investing. In general, as you might remember a few years ago, we were doing primarily growth investing but in the past 18-odd months, we have had a very strong focus on early stage and that’s continuing. In terms...

APEX VC Awards: Chiratae Ventures, Blume Ventures, Elevation Capital, Stride Ventures & Alteria Capital judged best funds of 2021

Press Release Elevation Capital , Chiratae Ventures , Blume Ventures , Stride Ventures and Alteria Capital were voted the top Venture Capital investors in India during 2021. The Venture Intelligence “Awards for Private Equity Excellence” (APEX) is dedicated to celebrating the best that the Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital industry has to offer. "VCs exist because Entrepreneurs exist and disrupt the ecosystem by creating new businesses. We are very excited to be part of the secular trend of tech disruption that would power India’s journey towards $ 10 Trillion economy over the next decade," said T C Meenakshi Sundaram, Founder & Vice Chairman, Chiratae Ventures , winner of " VC Fund raise of the Year " award. " We wish to thank all our entrepreneurs who have chosen to take funding from Chiratae Ventures and investors who have backed us with funds over the past 15 years in this journey. Congratulations to the entire Chiratae Ventures team and ...

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