afaqs! publisher Banyan Netfaqs receives more funding from Seedfund

The publisher aims to push strongly into consumer facing sites.

Banyan Netfaqs Pvt Ltd, the online publisher of websites afaqs! and The Mobile Indian, today announced that it had raised an additional round of funding from Seedfund Advisors. This is the second funding from Seedfund which first invested in Banyan Netfaqs in 2007.

According to the company, the funds will be deployed to launch three new websites in the consumer space as well as to strengthen existing properties. The ambition, says Shailesh Vickram Singh, executive director, Seedfund Advisors and a director on the Board of Banyan Netfaqs is, "to grow the company into one of the largest content networks in India".

Sreekant Khandekar, director and co-founder, says that the new funds will be deployed to set up the new websites over the next 18 months or so. "The first will be lifestyle related and will be launched within the next four months, followed by another by the end of 2013. The third site will come probably in the second half of 2014. Each of these will be a large, consumer-facing special interest site, with several million unique visitors each month."

The company believes that as Indian society urbanises and turns more affluent, it will get strongly segmented by interests. "For example, who could have imagined that there would be not just programmes but entire TV channels devoted to only food and cooking?" asks Khandekar. "The online presence of most traditional media companies is defined largely by news, which is generally their core business. Beyond news, Indians have developed a whole bunch of special interests that we will cater to."

Khandekar thinks that the company is well positioned to pursue this goal because it has strong foundations in content, technology and in online ad sales.

Apart from afaqs! and The Mobile Indian, Banyan Netfaqs also has a fortnightly print magazine, afaqs! Reporter, as well as Campus, its training arm which has conducted 35 workshops over the past 12 months. Apart from that, there is also www.thepodium.in , a professional networking site for the advertising, marketing and media community that is currently in beta stage.

Sreekant Khandekar and Sandeep Vij co-founded the company whose first property, afaqs! (originally agencyfaqs!) went online in September 1999.