Temasek Holdings is going big into India’s technology scene via conglomerate Tata Group. According to reports in the Indian press over the weekend, the Singapore investment firm has bought 10 per cent of Tata Sky for US$56 million ($86.3 million), scoring its third major investment in the Tata group to date.
An Indian newspaper, The Economic Times, said on Sunday that the stake was “recently diluted” by Tata Group, whose original interest in Tata Sky — a direct-to-home television operator — was 80 per cent.
Started in 2004 as a joint venture, Tata Sky is 20-per-cent owned by Indian television network Star TV, which is a unit of media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Unnamed sources told the Business Standard that Temasek inked the deal about a month back and has an option to raise its stake to “the permissible limit of 26 per cent”.
A formal announcement is expected soon.
Last year, Temasek snapped up 9.9 per cent of telecom company Tata Teleservices. It has also invested in Tata Consultancy Services, Asia’s biggest information technology firm known for its business process outsourcing services.
With Tata Sky, Temasek effectively owns a part of India’s No 1 direct-to-home TV operator with a subscriber base of about half a million.
The pole position, however, may be threatened with the possible entry of newcomers such as Bharti, Reliance and Sun TV, reported India media.
Undaunted, Tata Sky’s chief marketing officer Vikram Mehra was quoted as saying in the Economic Times: “We are the market leader now and confident of retaining the status even if the competition stiffens with the entry of others in the field.”
Source : Channel News Asia