| NEW
DELHI: Private equity firm Saif Partners has increased its stake in Homeshop18,
Network18's home shopping television unit, to 35 per cent following its recent
capital infusion of $16 million. In
the first round, Saif Partners had invested $10 million to take a 25 per cent
stake in Homeshop18. Network18's
holding has, thus, fallen from 75 per cent to 65 per cent. Capital18, Network18's
venture capital arm, had put in $5 million to complete the second stage of equity
funding of $21 million. "The
shareholding has changed by 10 per cent. The original funding companies decided
to invest even in the second round. It goes to show how bullish they are on the
business," says HomeShop18 CEO Sundeep Malhotra.
HomeShop18 will be investing mainly in beefing up the distribution and content
of the channel. "We had first gone into the non-Tam tier II and tier III
cities where carriage fee is not that expensive. But we have also realised that
the business comes from the metros. Now we are in Bangalore and Delhi. We will
be moving to Mumbai and Hyderabad within the next 10-15 days. We will also be
ramping up our logistics support," says Malhotra. Competition,
according to Malhotra, will help in growing the size of the market. "The
need of the hour is to establish home shopping as a credible brand. You need more
players to change the current perception of the consumers regarding home shopping,"
he adds. HomeShop18
does 3000 transactions daily and has an average of 15000 customers who call up
the customer care centre. Online comprises 10 per cent of the entire business. | 
