Correction: Ad sales teams for the mobile properties of Indiagames and UTV New Media are being merged, not for all digital properties, as we incorrectly reported earlier. UTVi has finally become Bloomberg UTV. The channel logo, colour scheme, graphics (channel ID) all changed this morning and the website Bloombergutv.com has…

Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group firm Adlabs Ltd today said its board has approved a rights issue of equity shares to raise upto Rs600 crore. Funds will be utilized to expand the number of screens worldwide (to over 570 from 428 now), establish a media BPO, set up studios and…

As their model of subsidising expensive set top boxes to gain customers continue to burn cash in a competitive market, direct-to-home companies are looking at different options to raise money. Mint reported today that Chennai-headquartered Sun Direct, which is making an ambitious bid for a pan-India play, is looking to…

Deepening his financial stake in Hollywood, Billionaire Anil Dhirubhai Ambani has picked up a 50% stake in Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks SKG for $325 million. The investment is part of an $825 million first round of funding for Dreamworks, which will now make five or six movies a year. Ambani’s interest…

Big FM, the Reliance Adag group FM radio operator that recently received permissions to demerge from parent Adlabs Ltd, will be listed as a separate company under Reliance Unicom, Business Standard reports. Two days ago, Adlabs said it has received permissions from the ministry of information and broadcasting to demerge…

We are introducing a weekly roundup of industry moves culled from a range of sources—some of which we have covered and some that we haven’t. The focus is on senior executive movement in the industries that we cover—media (digital and traditional) and entertainment. If you think we are missing anything,…

Adlabs Films Ltd, part of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group, today said it was setting up one of the largest digital restoration and content processing facilities in the world. The facility has started operations with 300 people, and will scale up to 1,200 people in the first year, the company…

Bigflix.com, the video-on-demand and video rental service from the Reliance ADA Group, today named Preetam Shah as vice-president for international business development. Shah is currently VP for US venture operations at group firm Reliance Capital. His responsibilities at BigFlix will be in addition to those at Reliance Capital, the company…

Business Standard reports that Reliance Big TV, the direct-to-home service of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, is in talks with a clutch of marquee private equity firms such as Sequoia Capital, Carlyle Group, KKR as well as US-based DTH firm Direct TV, to offload a 49% stake. Indian laws allow…

BigAdda, Reliance ADAG’s social networking play, is eying $4 - $5 million (approx Rs 17 crore)  within the next 12 months, expecting a majority of the same to come from advertisements. ET quotes COO, Shivanandan Pare, stating BigAdda began earning revenue since June this year, albiet an amount too negligible…

BigAdda, Reliance Entertainment’s social networking play, has gone mobile with a mobile app, wap site and SMS features. The Big B(eta) seems to have gone well, considering they first launched the mobile app to ease Amitabh Bachchan’s blogging pains. The app, titled MobileAdda, supports Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Sony (NYSE: SNE),…

Reliance ADA Group has launched its DTH/satellite TV venture BIG TV, with 202 channels including 50 subscription VOD channels. The company says it is targeting 40 percent of the market within a year of launch, a very ambitious target, but will use all its muscle to promote it, including broadband…

Zapak, Reliance ADAG’s online casual gaming arm, has launched Zapakworld, a casual game aggregator consisting of 12236 games, reports Medianama. User’s have the ability to upload their own games. Note that Zapak in its earliest avatar was an aggregator itself, albeit not one that scrapped for player embed codes on…

—Anil Ambani is one busy man. Dreamworks SKG is near an agreement tbe funded by Reliance ADAG reports Bloomberg. As with an as yet un-finalized deal, the reports are conflicting. While in one place it states the funding is to the tune of $550 million, a sentence later it states…

Zapak.com has dipped its toes into the mobile domain through its Zapak.mobi venture. The GPRS-based site offers games for mobile download and play, with multiplayer aspects and a message box, to bring in a community touch-point. The multiplayer titles are currently turn-based only—apparently due to bandwidth restrictions. There are five…

Distribution is seemingly the magic sauce of the movie rental business as both Seventymm and Moviemart expand their footprint. Moviemart, earlier relegated to Delhi and the National Capital Region, has expanded its services to 300 cities in India reports Afaqs. Interestingly it has tied up with TNT, the logistics company.…

Its hard to resist a headline like that. Reliance ADAG’s love affair with the Bachchan’s continues, this time in the form a mobile blogging application called MoBlog developed especially for Amitabh Bachchan. The re-designed blog features a mobile shaped left navigation featuring twitter-esque updates from Big B (or possibly his…

T’is the season of radio going international. Close on the heels of Virgin Radio’s acquisition by competitor Radio Mirchi, Big FM has tied up with Singapore’s Radio Network MediaCorp to broadcast Bollywood hits in the city state. ET reports an agreement was signed on Tuesday which will see Big FM…

Nimbus Communications has officially launched its home video entertainment rental and sale business called Showtime. The stores, which distribute DVD, VCDs and Game CDs, are currently only Bombay centric with 8 distribution centres. The release states an investment plan of over Rs 1.5 billion in the next 3 years with…