(1888PressRelease)
September 12, 2008 - Homeshop18.com : 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.
"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.
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