&w=3840&q=100)
Zee to raise over ₹2K cr from preferential issue of convertible warrants
Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) will raise over Rs 2,237 crore from the preferential issue of convertible warrants, as its board of directors on Monday approved the promoters increasing their shareholding in the company.
These warrants are proposed to be allotted to Altilis Technologies or Sunbright Mauritius Investments, according to the stock exchange filing.
The promoters' shareholding in ZEEL will rise to 18.39 per cent from 3.99 per cent.
'In a second board meeting held later in the day, the board of directors considered the various alternatives discussed by JP Morgan and, after due deliberations, adopted and approved the enhancement of promoter shareholding by issuance of up to 16,95,03,400 fully convertible warrants to the promoter group entities on a preferential basis, at Rs 132 per warrant. The promoters of the company will participate in the fundraising exercise by investing Rs 22,37,44,48,800 (Rs 2,237.4 crore) for the company's next phase of growth, taking the total promoter shareholding to 18.39 per cent. The preferential issue is subject to shareholders' approval,' it said in a statement.
Before this, the promoter and promoter group, led by Essel Group's Chairman Emeritus of ZEEL, Subhas Chandra, and his family, held 3.99 per cent of the shareholding in the company, according to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Its shares closed at Rs 138.25, up by 0.68 per cent, on NSE.
Shubham Shree, on behalf of the promoter group, was quoted saying, 'The promoters submitted their desire to enhance their shareholding to the board on 1 May when the stock price was at Rs 106.35; however, they are committed to the company and its business even at this higher price.'
The Mumbai-based broadcaster also had another meeting with JP Morgan, an investment bank, it stated in its release, where the latter presented an assessment of the company's growth plans and strategic initiatives and also discussed the market perception of the stock and potential alternatives with the board, ZEEL said.
R Gopalan, Chairman, ZEEL, said in a statement that the board had deliberated upon the various alternatives discussed with JP Morgan and conducted a thorough evaluation of the company's growth plans.
'The board believes that the steps being implemented to enhance the promoter shareholding will ensure their added motivation to work in line with the enhanced business plan. The investment by the promoters, coupled with the strong, ambitious growth initiatives planned by the management team, will ensure that 'Z' (the new brand logo) remains well-positioned to accelerate its strategic plans to achieve its targeted aspirations,' he added.
This comes a month after the company announced its rebranding process and a new phase of growth backed by its focus on content and technology, and its long-term vision around ZEEL's performance and profitability. These steps follow the company implementing several cost-cutting measures in FY25, after Punit Goenka, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), ZEEL, said in the earnings call for the January–March quarter that there is no room for cost-cutting right now for the expansion of its EBITDA margin.
In June, the company also announced a strategic equity partnership with content and technology start-up Bullet, where ZEEL is expected to either invest or acquire a stake in the platform, it had stated in the stock exchange filing. Bullet developed India's first micro-drama application focused on fast-paced, creator-driven content through short-duration vertical format episodes targeted towards younger audiences.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
14 minutes ago
- Mint
TCS, Infosys see slowdown in large accounts
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Infosys Ltd clocked less business from a few of their marquee clients last year as global uncertainties rose, potentially slowing growth at two of India's largest IT services companies. TCS got less business from Citigroup Inc. and Postbank, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank AG, last year as compared with FY24. Both Citibank and Deutsche Bank are among the 30 largest clients of the Mumbai-based IT outsourcer, according to an executive privy to the matter. Second-largest IT services firm Infosys got less business from German automotive company, Daimler AG. The trend of large accounts giving less business, which shows up in annual filings and analysts' findings, mirrors the scene at smaller IT firms. Hexaware Technologies Ltd is expected to get less business from Fannie Mae, one of its three largest accounts, this year, Mint reported on 9 June. Mphasis Ltd lost a chunk of its business with FedEx to Accenture Plc, while Microsoft reduced the business it gave to LTIMindtree Ltd and Sonata Software Ltd. Emails sent to TCS and Infosys went unanswered. Also read | TCS revenue from Tata Group companies nears $1 billion Less revenue from Citibank, which is among its top five accounts, might have caused TCS's E-Serve subsidiary to report a revenue decline in FY25. The subsidiary was formed when TCS acquired Citi's India-based back-end centre in FY09. Its revenue in FY25 declined 31% year-on-year to $155 million. To be sure, revenue from this subsidiary has been falling for two consecutive years. 'While the absolute revenue of the subsidiary is not significant in the context of overall TCS revenue, it is worth noting that the revenue decline (of the subsidiary) stems from a single client. The entire year-on-year revenue decline is driven by the top account revenue shrinking to $27 million from $96 million in the prior year," said Kotak Institutional Equities analysts Kawaljeet Saluja, Sathishkumar S., and Vamshi Krishna, in a note dated 2 June. Mint could not independently ascertain the reasons behind the lower business from Citibank. A similar decline was reported in TCS's German subsidiary, TCS Tech Solutions GmBH, which was acquired by TCS on 1 January 2021 from Deutsche Bank. The subsidiary's revenue declined 33% on a yearly basis to 126 million euros (approximately $136 million). The subsidiary's revenue has been declining for two consecutive years. Read this | Tata Sons feels the heat as TCS shrinks dividend for the first time in 20 years 'The decline was due to lower revenue from the Deutsche Bank account due to the ramp-down of the Postbank engagement," said the Kotak analysts. Deutsche Bank had acquired Postbank in 2008. Deutsche Bank announced in November 2023 that it would shut almost half of the 550 branches of Postbank over the next two years as its customers preferred online banking. TCS bought Postbank Systems AG, the IT firm of Postbank, in November 2020, in order to increase its business with its German client. Postbank Systems rebranded as TCS Technology Solutions AG in January 2021 and about 80% of the subsidiary's revenue came from Postbank. Mint had reported in November 2023 that revenue from Postbank would decline to $130 million by 2025. For now, revenue from banks and financial institutions makes up almost a third of the company's overall revenue. TCS revenue in FY25 grew 3.78% annually to $30.18 billion, its slowest revenue growth in four years. Also read | Accenture and Infosys have beaten TCS. What is N. Chandrasekaran planning? However, TCS was not the only company getting a smaller bite of the pie. Bengaluru-based Infosys missed out too. Revenue of Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH, which is its subsidiary for the Daimler project, declined for the first time. The company got $418 million from the subsidiary, down 8.5% on a yearly basis. Notably, the revenue decline from the subsidiary comes after two consecutive years of growth exceeding 40%. 'If there is a revenue decline in the subsidiary, it clearly means that revenue from the Daimler account has reached its peak and matured," said JM Financial analysts, Abhishek Kumar and Nandan Arekal, in a note dated 16 June. Notably, the subsidiary has not been all that profitable for Infosys, as it has been incurring losses for four consecutive years. Infosys inked an eight-year contract with Daimler in December 2020 that would bring it more than $3 billion in business. This was one of chief executive Salil Parekh's largest deals since he took over as chief executive officer in January 2018. Read this | Cognizant and Infosys are tapping a new trend in IT deals to combat tough times Infosys reported $19.28 billion in revenue, up 3.85% on a yearly basis. Infosys is eyeing an early extension of the eight-year contract with the German automobile company, which includes an AI component, a person aware of the matter said. The decline in revenue from marquee clients for TCS and Infosys also comes at a time when both companies are struggling to bag mega deals, or those valued at over $1 billion in contract value.
Time of India
19 minutes ago
- Time of India
We would like to be DeepSeek in the West, says Essential AI cofounder
Dearth of collaborative efforts in AI domain may widen inequality around these capabilities even as pressures to monetise AI models which are 'difficult to ignore' may eventually lead companies to prioritise less on a long-term focus in research, said Ashish Vaswani , CEO and cofounder at Essential AI , a San Francisco-based AI startup. Vaswani, who earlier worked as a research scientist at Google Brain, is known for his pioneering contributions to the field of deep learning. In 2017, he co-authored the seminal paper 'Attention is All You Need' that broke new ground by introducing the transformer architecture which forms the foundation of generative AI applications like ChatGPT and its successors. Vaswani later cofounded Adept AI labs with another co-author Niki Parmar, before co-founding Essential AI with Parmar in 2023. The startup, backed by the likes of Google, Nvidia and AMD, builds full-stack AI solutions that enhance efficiency for automating labour-intensive and repetitive work. Its mission is to 'deepen the partnership between humans and computers.' Over the last few years, billions of dollars have been spent on scaling AI models, with less to show in terms of return on investments. Speaking to ET during this visit to India, Vaswani said this could impact AI research. 'There are several instances of companies shuttering the longer-term R&D efforts in interest of pouring all the resources into the money-making aspects, especially at a time of distress,' he said. According to him, the onus is on the leadership to ensure healthy long-term bets in addition to building a sustainable business. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Further, in the pursuit of leadership in the AI arms race, companies are running the risk of ignoring important ideas. 'Any race forces you to take existing ideas that work, and pour resources into it to scale it up, while ignoring other riskier, and alternative but faster paths,' Vaswani noted. Lack of transparency A lack of openness, unlike earlier, is hindering the advancement of ideas, according to Vaswani. 'In 2017, there were many labs that could produce revolutionary ideas, and models are just an artifact of that spirit. It is never a single innovation but a series that comes together and then gives you these nonlinear improvements. The chance of that being widely shared is lower today,' he said. The end goal of creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) too is narrowing people's view, according to Vaswani. AGI is the stated aim of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI , for instance. 'I don't think of AGI as much as a state of progression, like growth in capabilities or intelligence growth. I don't think there is an end to these progressions,' said Vaswani. Need for open-source At Essential AI, therefore, the team is building an open science or open-source frontier model that everybody can control, said Vaswani. He explained that the idea is to put their work on frontier models out in the open so that others can build on them. This would include opening up its weights, and even to a certain extent data that they are using for training, he added. 'I think this is a strategic imperative because the point when we are able to reach the same level in the domains we care about, which is frontier, companies will trust our model more because they can see the process,' he said. On generating returns on investments from using open-source models, Vaswani said, 'I would not say it is trivial to make money as a closed-source model today, either - they are spending a lot of money, right?' He sees a growing market 'Having spoken with potential future collaborators and customers, they would love to use an open-source model in collaboration with us. I think there are business opportunities. I don't want to cast this moniker on us. But, in the short term, we would like to be the DeepSeek in the West,' he said, referring to the Chinese AI startup which rapidly gained prominence for developing high-performing and cost-efficient large language models.
Time of India
19 minutes ago
- Time of India
ETtech Explainer: Behind crackdown on unauthorised use of govt databases for user onboarding
The Union government is restricting private firms from using official databases like Aadhaar to offer identity verification services to their clients as part of a crackdown on unauthorised access to sensitive databases. According to two people in the know, officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ( MeitY ) have conveyed to the executives of multiple technology-led startups to abstain from offering offline Aadhaar-based KYC services because they have been doing it through unauthorised channels. ET had reported on June 9 that startups like Zoop, Surepass, Digitap and Signzy were impacted by a government order restricting access to their websites through telecom networks. While the government is tightening scrutiny of data platforms, industry insiders are trying to find regulated channels through which Aadhaar verification can be done. ET explains identity verification services provided by these startups and the issues around them. What are the core services being provided? Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories As the customer onboarding journey goes digital, it is critical for financial services companies, consumer technology firms to validate customers. That is where ID verification startups come in, offering verification of documents submitted by consumers. They also help authenticate customers' identity numbers by cross-checking with government databases. Players like IDfy, Signzy, DigiO and others offer services like video KYC, Aadhaar e-Sign and others. What is the problem here? The Centre is trying to find out whether these services are being provided through legal channels and lawful means. Industry sources told ET that while large venture-funded startups stick to the rules and are also regulated in most of the cases, many smaller players in the ecosystem gain unauthorised access to some of the government databases. 'Some of the platforms are also involved in scraping from government websites, getting consumer data through unregulated means,' chief executive at an ID verification startup said on condition of anonymity. Some of the data contained in Aadhaar are personally identifiable information (PII), while some of the GST data might not be classified as PII. Who is looking into the issue? MeitY, which is in charge of all the digital properties of the government, restricted access to some of these websites through certain telecom networks. Once executives of these firms met officials, they were told to follow designated channels for access to the Aadhaar database, so that consumers can be verified by only regulated platforms through their Aadhaar numbers. Similar services are also provided by the GST (goods and services tax) database and through the income tax database. Why do startups need these platforms? Fraud prevention is one of the key areas for which startups are dependent on these platforms. Mostly for fintech services like digital lending, insurance, payments and merchant KYC, backend customer verification is extremely useful. They integrate with these service providers to offer verification on the go. 'If there are too many hops, then the customer might drop off. Once these verifications happen via API integrations, the customer experience gets smoother,' founder of a fintech startup said. Other issues As the online verification sector has grown, startups have also been scouting for as many alternate data points as possible for these enrichment services. Going beyond the GST database or PAN database, platforms have been offering enrichment services on top of customers' UPI IDs. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) cracked down on such unauthorised use of the UPI IDs in October last year. Now, the government is also trying to crack down on the use of Aadhaar through unauthorised means.
