PioTV.com aims to be the MySpace of Indians abroad

PioTV.com has gone live after Union minister for overseas Indian affairs V Ravi formally unveiled the website in New Delhi on Thursday. The website is being described as “a digitally integrated media platform” that is meant to serve the entertainment appetite of the estimated 50 million people of Indian origin (PIO) across the globe, whose annual gross income equals the annual output of India at $1 trillion today.

Munish Gupta, chairman and CEO, PioTV.com, said, “We want to be the online identity of the PIOs, we want to be their face.”

The site will broadcast various news stories and policy reports from the government of India, but with a focus on what a PIO would like to know. It will feature news, features, business, talk shows, forums, sports, lifestyle, fashion and Bollywood shows.

“We have a bit of YouTube, with surfers uploading their own content on the site, and we have a bit of MySpace, with our PIO Directory, where one can find the ‘who’s who’ of the PIO community abroad. This directory is our attempt to be a MySpace of PIOs,” said Gupta.

PioTV has penned a number of deals in order to aggregate news and entertainment content from various sources. The website is a broadcast affiliate of CNN, which lets it use its visual, text and audio content. “CNN has also shown interest in carrying news and information about the achievements of the PIO community worldwide,” said Gupta. The particulars of the deal have not been disclosed.

PioTV will also carry news and photographs from the Indian news agency, Press Trust of India. For the audio content to be broadcast in its PIO Radio section, it has tied up with Sanchar Bharti, producer of audio content in all Indian languages. PioTV has also forged content partnerships with a group of individuals, production houses, record labels, and various Bollywood banners. It has partnered with Prachar Communications, Time Group, North East TV Group and Sanskar Channel.

To make PioTV.com available on mobile phones, it has signed a distribution agreement with Airchord Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The content on PioTV.com is available for viewing free of cost; downloads will cost between 50 cents and $5. For the special content available on the site like numerology and astrology, the expert charges will be between $25 and $100.

The main advertising for PioTV.com is being handled by the Mumbai based Prachar Communications and online ad network Tyroo Media.