Indian language publisher New Horizon Media has raised a second round of funding, led by Beacon India Private Equity. This round also saw investment from existing promoters and Emergic Venture Capital, which had invested in the company in 2006. Deepak Shahdadpuri, Managing Director of Beacon India, has joined the NHM board. Beacon is a $200 million PE fund sponsored by Baer Capital Partners. This is their fifth investment in India, but the amount of funding has not been disclosed. NHM is founded by Badri Seshadri and K. Satyanarayan, who were co-founders of Cricinfo.com (bought by Wisden in 2003) and R. Ananthkumar.

NHM is a multilanguage, multi-format publisher of printed books, audio books and DVDs. Headquartered in Chennai, the company has retailed its audio books online at Audible, priced between $10-12 each. K Satyanarayan told me that the company doesn’t see any reliable online or mobile revenue models for the books yet, but is prepared for them: they’re creating content in a manner that it is portable across formats. Satyanarayan mentioned issues with consumption of text-based content on the mobile. The company has also begun retailing digital audio content - short stories priced between Rs. 5-10 - with kiosk company ADDkiosk. NHM intends to use the funding for increasing distribution, particularly in English.