You’re reading it here first: STAR India has launched a video portal called Video On The Rocks (VOTR). It seems that STAR is banking on premium content - like small clips of Koffee With Karan, the Great Indian Laughter Challenge, music videos and film trailers and clips from TV shows - to drive usage. Sumant Kasliwal, VP Interactive for STAR India has confirmed the launch of the site, saying that VOTR is still in beta, still being developed and they’re around a month away from a formal launch.

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Apparently, the idea is for the site to become a destination for short clips of premium content from not just STAR, but other media houses as well. Kasliwal doesn’t believe that the site will cannibalize on Indya on Demand, where they sell full TV shows, saying that VOTR will serve as a sampling site for that content. The site, expectedly, will be monetized with advertising. Users are also allowed to upload videos at VOTR, and hence there’s a risk of copyrighted content being uploaded. While Kasliwal says that they’ll follow the usual procedure of removing content once copyright owners point them out, I don’t think it will be too much of an issue if STAR is able to get the copyright owners on board anyway.

I also noticed that they’ve also launched “Indya Games”, a gaming portal powered by Games2Win. I’m sure Indiagames would have something to say about the name that’s been chosen for the site… Indya.com has also launched a travel meta-search engine powered by Zoomtra.