Earnings season has started again, kicking off with Q4 results from Apple, Microsoft and Google, among others. We’ll be tracking the results as they come in, so be sure to check back for more coverage in the coming weeks.

paidContent.org:
—Google’s $726 Million Writedown On AOL Is More Painful For Time Warner
—Google Can’t Save Newspapers Either; Gives Up On Print Ads
—Apple Being Investigated By SEC Over Way Jobs’ Health Handled? It Should Be
—Market Unimpressed With Slim’s Investment In NYTCo, Stock Down For The Day
—Playboy Warns Of Q4 Loss And $100 Million In Write-downs; Unspecified Number Of Jobs To Be Cut

mocoNews:
—Google Writes Down Clearwire Investment By $355 Million
—Sony Ericsson Will Use A Branded Experience For The Android Platform; Will It Be PlayStation?
—Ericsson To Cut 5,000 Additional Jobs; Weighed Down By Mobile Phone Sales
—Mobile Continues Momentum In 2009 With Inauguration; Potential To Be A “Wireless Woodstock”
—Report: Mobile Music To Grow To $16.8 Billion In 2013

paidContent:UK:
—MidemNet Thoughts: Music Biz Chasing Its Tail; Is Legal P2P The Answer?
—London Evening Standard Sold To Former KGB Spy For ‘Nominal Fee’
—Ofcom Review: Online Not Popular Enough, BBC Continues Innovation, C4 Remodelled
—Yahoo Cutting 20 Percent Of French Staff, Developers Bear The Brunt
—FT Staff Protesting Layoffs: ‘We Can’t Take Any More’
—Comment: Jon Gisby, New Media Director, Channel 4: We Can Re-Invent Public Service

Join us for our second EconMusic conference on Feb. 5 at the LA Times building

techTribe, backed by Canaan Partners, is now exploring options like finding a strategic partner or a buyer.

The business model for online recruitment based on referrals is not “working out”, techTribe CEO and Founder Rohit Agarwal admitted in an interview to VCCircle. The company is now exploring options like a strategic partner or a buyer.

San Francisco and New Delhi-based techTribe was founded by serial entrepreneur Rohit Agarwal, in 2006. Before starting techTribes, Agarwal was co-founder and VP of marketing and business development at Webify Solutions, which got acquired by IBM in July 2006.

The company hoped to make money by becoming a referral job portal. It had received an undisclosed amount of funding from Canaan Partners, US-based Miven Venture Partners and The Entrepreneur Funds in 2007.

“The model for referral recruitment as we had planned is not working out,” said Agarwal. A couple of months ago multiple sources had told VCCircle that the portal was in the market looking for a strategic partner or a buyer. When contacted then, Agarwal denied any such moves, although he admitted that certain strategic development was in the offing.

techTribe had expected online model to help in automating the referrals, which would help in scaling up the business. But referrals continue to be a manual process, and thus making it a less scalabale business. Now techTribe has stopped doing referrals, Agarwal said.

“We are thinking about alternatives and we will figure it out in the next couple of months,” said Agarwal. When asked about the options that techTribe has, Agarwal said they are the ones that any firms will have when faced with such challenges. “You look at a strategic buyer, a strategic partner or you basically say it didn’t work out,” said Agarwal.

techTribe has about half a million users. Its revenues come from companies posting their jobs which subsequently get referred by members on its network. Another revenue stream is from sponsorships of various ‘tribes’. Agarwal said that techTribe has 30-odd major communities, and hundreds of user generated ones. It’s not known how much revenues the company clocks currently.

techTribe is focused on IT/ITES segment with 60% of its members coming from that sector. The hiring in IT/ITES sector has been affected due to a global economic slowdown. Many firms have also started cutting jobs as their projects get shelved and delayed, affecting techTribe’s business.

However, the referral recruitment has advantages such as the quality of employees that firms get through this method is expected to be much higher. Also, referral method can help recruitment of mid- and senior-level positions. But techTribe has not been able to translate this into a scalable business.

The recruitment referral space has seen a number of players in the past couple of years, especially after techTribes was launched. Some of them are Yellojobs, Reffster and Technopax. The fate of these websites remains to be seen. Other such websites which depend on referral revenues are Linkedin and Brijj, while the latter is owned by Infoedge (Naukri).

Agarwal said that there are several lessons to be learned from this episode. He said only mass internet plays can work in India, not niche plays. “Unless it’s a service that is a must have, it doesn’t work in Indian web,” said Agarwal.

This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle

State-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) has said that it plans to launch 3G telecom services in national capital New Delhi in next 10
days. MTNL plans to launch 3G services in the commercial capital Mumbai by first week of February, reports PTI (via Business Standard). MTNL has not tied up with any content providers and has said that its Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) providers would give it the content.

Department of Telecom issued Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and MTNL spectrum to roll out all-India 3G services last year. The spectrum
auction for private telecom companies has been continually delayed, and many foreign companies may stay away due to global economic slowdown.

This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle

Top headlines of the week from our sister sites paidContent.org, mocoNews.net and paidContentUK:

paidContent.org:
—8-K Watch: Yahoo CEO Bartz Gets $1 Million Salary—But Stands To Earn Many Times That
—Apple’s Steve Jobs Taking Leave Of Absence To Deal With His Health
—Major Shake-up At Sling Media: Krikorian Brothers, Hirschhorn, White, Wilkes Leaving
—FCC’s Kevin Martin To Resign
—Consoles Make Their Mark In The Latest Push To Control The Living Room

For more on Yahoo’s new CEO, check out our Carol Bartz channel

mocoNews:
—Jobs’ Health React: Apple Can Live On; List Of Successors; More Transparency Is Needed
—CES Attendance Dropped 22 Percent This Year
—What Genachowski Will Do At The FCC
—Price Wars: Boost Mobile Unveils Unlimited Voice And Data Plan For $50
—Industry Moves: Motricity Names Four New Execs, Including New President/COO

paidContent:UK:
—European Challenges For New Yahoo CEO Bartz
—Yahoo Ditching AdSense Rival In Europe? May Hang On To Search
—FT Doing 80 New Layoffs: Online/Print Tie-Ups, Ridding’s Memo
—Balderton Targets Downturn Innovation With $430 Million New VC Fund
—Lloyd-Webber Breaking In To Games; Singalong With Evita, Phantom

Sequoia had invested $2.2M in Apnaloan in early 2007. It is one of the oldest loan origination portals.

Apnapaisa Pvt Ltd, the company which owns financial intermediary portals Apnaloan.com and Apnainsurance.com, has raised an undisclosed investment in its second round of funding from JAFCO Asia and the existing investor Sequoia Capital.

Sequoia had invested $2.2 million in Apnaloan in early 2007. Apnaloan, founded in 2000, is one of the oldest portals in this business. It initially had backers like Rediff.com (NSDQ: REDF), ING Vysya Bank, SIDBI Venture, Jumpstartup Venture Fund, FMO and Edelweiss Capital, while many of them have exited already.

In 2007, Sequoia Capital backed company founder Harshvardhan Roongta for a management buyout of Apnapaisa. Sequoia reportedly invested $2.2 million in the company then.

The loan origination market (including insurance products) is estimated at about Rs 1,500 crore currently. As for loans, the lead generation commission could be anywhere between 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent, while for health and auto insurance products it could be 5 per cent.

Apnapaisa offers services like a price comparison of products such as health insurance, term life, critical illness, home loans, personal loans, loan against property, business loan, plot loans, car loans, education loans and credit cards.

Besides Apnaloan, there are companies like LoanRaja.com (launched by Helion and DFJ-funded Komli), Deal4Loans.com (non-VC funded) and LoanWala.com (Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and Canaan-funded BharatMatrimony) in this space.

This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle.

Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) for health reasons. Tim Cook, the company’s COO, will take over, Apple announced. A message Jobs sent to Apple’s staff, telling them he was taking off until June, was distributed to the media after the market closed. The stock was halted after hours. In typically mysterious fashion, Jobs first attributed the move to his illness being a distraction, but then admitted he has learned since his pre-Macworld statement that “my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.” After-hours trading of Apple stock was halted around 4:30 PM EDT and resumed about a half hour later. Shares went as low as $76.11, but quickly recovered to $80.

The full text of the media advisory sent by Jobs is after the jump.

Last week’s pre-Macworld statement came after months of speculation about whether his pancreatic cancer had returned, based on how thin Jobs looked in his public appearances, stretching as far back as early last year. Rumors resurfaced again last month after Jobs said he would not give his traditional Macworld keynote, all of which has battered the company’s stock.

Tricia adds: Going forward, Apple obviously will have some tricky times to navigate with shareholders and consumers demanding innovative new products, in areas ranging from its legacy computer business to emerging categories like music players and mobile phones. In particular, the company will have to find its muse without Jobs, who from the outside looks to be the creative and inspirational lead for new ideas and its fierce competitiveness. But while he has received most of the credit for the company’s turnaround over the past few years, he’s also surrounded himself with the right people. Jobs’ health conditions are truly bad timing for the company since Apple has a great opportunity in this downturn to use its large cash position to buy companies and products, or make big investments at a low-cost. These projects may be put on hold or delayed because of the distraction of Jobs’ health.
Apple’s stock was halted in after-hours trading following a free-fall that led the stock down at least $6.53 a share, or 6.5 percent, from this afternoon’s close of $85.33. It’s hard to know whether that is an emotional reaction, or is reflective of the perception of Jobs’ financial contribution to the company.

Photo Credit: Danny Novo

Read More »

According to sources, more than half the $23M investment has gone to mobile VAS player One97 Communications.

Intel (NSDQ: INTC) Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of chipmaker Intel, has invested a total of $23 million in three Indian companies. The investments are in One97 Communications (a Delhi-based mobile value added services company), online B2B marketplace IndiaMART.com and vocational training institute Global Talent Track. The investment in Global Talent Track is a co-investment with Helion Venture Partners.

Though individual investment amounts were not disclosed, souces say that more than half of the $23 million investment has gone to One97 Communications, followed by IndiaMART and Global Talent Track, in that order.

The investments have come from Intel Capital’s $250 million India Technology Fund, founded in 2005. In July last year, Intel announced an investment of $17 million into three Indian companies - travel portal Yatra.com, events-oriented social networking portal BuzzInTown.com, and out-of-home advertising firm Emnet Samsara Media Pvt. Ltd.

For One97 Communications, this is second round of funding. The firm had been on the lookout for second round since early last year. In 2007, the firm had raised series A financing of about $8-10 million from SAIF Partners and Silicon Valley Bank. While Silicon Valley Bank has participated in the second round, SAIF Partners has not invested in the second round. One97 plans to use these funds to scale up its operations and increase sales and marketing in India and abroad. One97 was advised by Avendus Capital on this deal.

Mobile VAS companies are expected to do well as India is opening its doors to 3G telecom services. There are quite a few funded players in this segment like OnMobile (got listed last year) and Cellebrum (part of BK Modi Group).

IndiaMART.com, with a presence in 100 cities, is an online B2B marketplace connecting Indian suppliers with domestic and global buyers. The company claimes to about 15,000 paid company listings and half a million free listings. The company was founded in 1996, and this is the first institutional funding for the company. The company also has a private treaty deal with Bennett, Coleman & Company.

The funds will be used by IndaiMART to grow market share by launching marketing initiatives, expanding service offerings, extending reach into new markets and geographies, and evaluating potential strategic opportunities. 

Global Talent Track (GTT), founded by Uma Ganesh (wife of Ganesh Natarajan of Zensar Technologies), aims to address the current gap in the demand and supply of trained manpower, providing a range of short and long term courses in a number of vocational fields. Education sector is becoming a favourite with private equity and venture capital investors given its non-cyclical nature. GTT plans to use the funds raised to start rolling out vocational education services in India and abroad. Helion Venture Partners has joined Intel Capital in this first round of investment in GTT.

This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle.

ContentSutra wants to sublet some office space in south or central Delhi. We’re looking for a separate room within a bigger office that has
broadband Internet access. Please email us at rental AT contentsutra.com if you have space to rent that fits those specs.

Mercatus, an angel investment fund, is looking at investing in software product firms, retail & cleantech.

Singapore-based early stage venture capital firm Mercatus Capital has closed two investments in in India. The fund has invested undisclosed amounts in I-Flapp Technologies and Lucid Software. I-Flapp develops mobility solutions which help one carry software like Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE), MS Office applications, etc. on pen drives. Lucid Software specialises in non-destructive testing (NDT) technology and develops software solutions.

Mercatus, with a focus on early stage, invests between $250K-$2 million in each company. There are only few funds in India at the early stage who are investing in that range. There is Seedfund, Ojas Ventures, Accel India (formerly Erasmic Ventures) and angel funding organisations like Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels.

Mercatus closed the deal with Chennai-based Lucid only a couple of months back. “They build software that allows you to virtualise, map everything and see the defects,” says Rajesh Sukumaran, investment manager for Mercatus Capital’s India operations. Lucid’s software has applications in areas having large infrastructure facilities like dams and nuclear installations. The company, which has around 50 employees, cliams to have recently bagged some global tenders. Lucid’s clients are mainly in Europe, especially Germany. 

I-Flapp, based out of Singapore and Bangalore, was funded early last year. The company is now launching a new version of its products, says Sukumaran. The company is ramping up its operations and tying up with software distributors for new products.

Mercatus says it’s an angel investment fund, and its limited partners are high net worth individuals (HNIs), most of them based out of Singapore. Mercatus is focused on the Asia-Pacific region, though it does not have any country specific fund. It is investing out of $90 million fund and invests in China, Australia and New Zealend.

Though Mercatus is sector agnostic, it prefers to invest in products firms. “We like to invest in product-based companies, which can be patented and taken global,” adds Sukumaran. Globally, Mercatus has several investments in the health care sector. The fund is looking at IT, retail sector and is also exploring opportunities in the cleantech space.

This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle.

Entrepreneur Vinay Chhajlani and journalist Jehangir Pocha have bought INX News, which runs an English channel.

INX News Pvt Ltd, the company which owns news channel NewsX, has got a new owner. The company, promoted by Peter and Indrani Mukerjea, has been sold to Indi Media Company Pvt. Ltd. The financial terms of the deal are not known.

Indi Media is co-founded by Vinay Chhajlani, the promoter of Indore-based regional dailys Naidunia and Nav Dunia. The group has also launched a multi lingual portal Webdunia. Chhajlani has been joined by Jehangir S. Pocha, former editor of Businessworld magazine. Pocha will have an equity stake in INX News and will look after the operations of the channel. Chhajlani also technology solutions firm Diaspark Inc.

The deal is subject to all regulatory approvals, a release said.

Commenting on the sale, Indrani Mukerjea, Founder & CEO, INX Media, says, “Having created NewsX as a premier English News channel brand in such a short span of time, I hope channel would continue to grow from strength to strength and would retain its credibility as it always has”.

INX Media had raised private equity from a clutch of investors including Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, New Silk Route, SREI, Kotak Private Equity and New Vernon PE.

This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle

We’ve kicked off the New Year into full gear with our own Staci Kramer, Tameka Kee and Tricia Duryee covering the giant Consumer Electronics Show. Their coverage can be seen at our CES 2009 channels on both paidContent.org and mocoNews.net.

Our top headlines of the first full week in 2009:

paidContent.org:
—@ CES: Sony’s Stringer Promises Internet Connectivity for 90 Percent Of Products
—@ CES: Norwest’s Chang: Things Could Get Scary For Facebook, Slide in ‘09
—Citi Media: Time Warner’s Martin On AOL: Don’t Expect Any Strategic Deals Soon
—Confirmed: Apple Dropping DRM Across iTunes, New Pricing Structure, 3G Downloads
—Ziff Davis Gets Out Of The Game: Sells 1UP To Hearst, Shutters EGM Mag To Focus On PCMag Network

mocoNews:
—@ CES: Fox Mobile Delays New Branding Intiative; Blames Economy
—Palm Announces Palm WebOS At CES, Also Palm Pre
—Clearwire Demonstrates Live Streaming Video Over WiMax
—Microsoft Plunges Into Mobile Advertising With Verizon Wireless Deal
—CES: Sony Ericsson Chief’s Aspirations? Remain In Third Place

paidContent:UK:
—ITV Adding VOD To Virgin Cable And Website; Something Of A Tipping Point
—LiveJournal Lays Off San Francisco Staff, Will Operate From Moscow
—Centaur Could Close Public Private Finance Magazine, Website
—Social Networks Face Challenging 2009; Must Monetise Or Die
—Forecast 2009: Digital Leaders Share Their Predictions; What’s Yours?

The company claims to have more than 1000 stores live on their platform.

Hyderabad based Reasoning Global eApplications Ltd, a company that helps drive internet and mobile traffic to retail stores, has raised $1 million from UK based high networth individuals.The funds raised will be utilised for expanding the marketing and operations on a national basis.

This is the second round of funding for the company which raised Rs 3 crore from angel investors last year. The angel investors in the first round included Atim Kabra of Frontline Ventures, Raman Kumar of Cbay Systems, Ashish Mehta of Reliance Asset Management and L.V.N. Muralidhar of Lastaki Management Consultants.

Reasoning Global provides applications to retailers and manufacturer to drive traffic from the internet and mobile to their local retail stores. The company claims the solutions offer a concentrated marketing effort to the brands by using internet and mobile as customer touch points.

“We are basically making the retail chains and stores searchable on the internet along with their updated information.” Said Girish Kasliwal, VP, Reasoning Global eAplications Ltd.

Reasoning allows customers to find products, brands, or sales locally, and to scan the inventory at any given shopping center. The company claims to have more than 1,000 stores live on their platform.

Reasoning’s clients include brand like Reliance, Gitanjali Jwellers and Nakshatra .

The firm’s revenues come from the one time setup and integration fee that it charges the retailers to come online, annual fee per store, customer charges, revenue from user SMS to the short code, lead generation through this platform and the banner and text advertisements.

The company was formed in October, 2006 by Abhay Deshpande in Hyderabad. Currently, it employs 140 people and has offices in Gurgaon and Mumbai.

Currently, the company operates through four products. Its products include Martjack, a multi-channel business enhancing solution, which allows manufacturers, retail chains and single stores to drive traffic from internet and mobile to their physical stores and Parent Communication, which connects parents, child and the school management online.

Other products by Reasoning include Ebhav and Mbhav. While Ebhav is an online Indian products local search engine that allows customers to compare and buy products, Mbhav is a mobile search engine.

Future Group’s Futurebazaar is also another online shopping portal that allows customers to scan through the products offered at the Future Group stores.

We are pleased to welcome our new head of sales, Susan Leiterstein. Susan joins ContentNext Media from Incisive Media, where she was vice president and publisher of ClickZ, SearchEngineWatch and SES Events. Prior to that, she was associate publisher at The Deal and senior sales director at DoubleClick Media. She also held senior posts at JupiterMedia, Cowles Business Media, Thomson and McGraw Hill, Inc. Susan can be reached at Susan AT contentnext.com. For more details on Susan’s background, please see our release.

India’s 3G auction may be headed for more delays after its finance ministry decided that the base price of the sale should be doubled, reports the Economic Times. The bidding for the country-wide licenses was set to open on January 30, with a reserve price of 20.2 billion rupees ($412 million) for 3G spectrum and 11.1 billion rupees ($229 million) for WIMAX radio frequencies. The finance ministry, however, has asked the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to increase the price and to resubmit the auction proposal for their approval. If the DoT decides to do this, it would mean that the auctions would definitely be delayed, as any changes to the bidding process would then have to be approved by the telecoms regulator.

India is one of the world’s fastest growing mobile markets, adding some 10 million new users a month and the Finance Ministry is eager to wring as much as they can from the auction. But fears have surfaced that the sale of the licenses, already delayed once, may not hit their target price of 400 billion rupees ($8 billion). Foreign operators have been permitted to participate in India’s 3G auction, but may stay away. Global operators have complained that the bidding is structured in favor of domestic operators, while the credit crunch has made it difficult to raise financing. Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), for one, noted in a letter in October to the DoT that the economic crisis meant that it was taking companies longer to raise the necessary funds. As ET notes, if foreign companies who were expected to bid “aggressively” sit this one out, the government would miss its original target price “by a long margin.” Doubling the reserve price gives their stated goal a chance of being reached.

• Vodafone Seeking To Postpone India’s 3G Auction

DirecPay.com will be a new entrant in the e-payment space where there are only few players.

TimesofMoney, a Times Group company, has entered the electronic payment gateway space. The company has launched DirecPay.com, a real-time payment gateway for e-commerce websites. The merchants can implement net banking, credit cards & debit cards as collection options. It has a tie up with over 20 banks for net banking, and claims to have a customer base of 200 merchants across the country. TimesofMoney currently provides services like money transfers to India, NRI services, and co-branded cards.

In India, there are only few e-payment gateway providers like CCAvenue, ICICI Bank’s Payseal and Transecute. There are also banks like Citibank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank that provide payment solutions. The entry of TimesofMoney will provide one more option to merchants (e-commerce companies), and hopefully a faster integration. Indian merchants also use PayPal, however, it does not provide transactions in Indian rupee, which is a major drawback. But the biggest positive for PayPal is its easy integration process. The others follow very stringent and time consuming documentation to instal the gateways.

This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle

It’s a boomtime investment during a slowdown. Bollywood portal Chakpak.com which hopes to make money from advertising and merchandising has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Canaan Partners and the existing seed partner, Accel India, formerly Erasmic Venture Fund. ET puts the funding amount at $5 million.

What prompted Canaan to invest in Chakpak is its market potential. Alok Mittal, Managing Director, Canaan Partners, India explains that out of a base of 40 million online users in India, 18 million are already accessing some or the other entertainment destination. This put together with the demand for Indian content outside India totals to 25 -30 million users. Mittal says “it’s a large category. Since chakpak.com gets 5 million visitors every month, they have shown very strong traction over the last 12 months in building a significant presence.”

The site claims to get 5 million unique visitors a month which is about 20% of the overall consumption of online entertainment in India and by NRIs.

According to The PricewaterhouseCoopers and FICCI Frames Report, the Indian online media and entertainment market is expected to grow to $36 billion by 2012.

Though chakpak’s services largely revolve around films, they also plan to tap other revenue streams such as movie marketing, movie merchandising, and pay per download movie views. Chakpak will compete with the likes of Bollywood Hungama (formerly IndiaFM), Buzz18, ZoomTV, E24Bollywood and MyPopKorn.

This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle.

paidContent.org:
—Macrovision Sells Off TV Guide Network For Up To $300 Million; Shocker: Also Sells Online
—Liberty Media’s Maffei On Split-Off: We Can Sell DirecTV Shares To Ease Debt
—YouTube: A Money-Maker For Music Labels, But What About Google?
—McClatchy Stock Plunges 30 Percent For All-Time Low
—Sirius Shareholders Approve Reverse Stock Split To Ease Debt
—Velocity’s Miller Out Of The Running For Top Yahoo Job Or Takeover: Report

mocoNews:
—Mobile Veteran Changes Focus From Reaching The Mass Market To Single Focus On The iPhone
—Interview: James Parton, Head, O2 Litmus: A Prelude To An App Store?
—Earnings Call: RIM Sees Strong December Sales; 45 Percent Of Subscribers Are Now Consumers
—Earnings: Best Buy Asks For Voluntary Staff Departures To Deal With ‘Challenging Environment’
—Motorola Freezes Pension Plans, Employee Salaries And 401k Contributions And Cuts Pay Of Top Execs
—Nokia And Motorola Dominate China’s Smartphone Sales; BlackBerry Bold To Launch In Korea

paidContent:UK:
—Virgin’s 50Mbps Strategy: Next Step Is Blurring TV, PC, Mobile
—Industry Moves: IPC Media Names Evelyn Webster As CEO, Sylvia Auton Moves To New York
—EMI Launches Personalised Music Discovery Site For Direct-To-Fan Retail
—Phorm’s Revolving Door: UK CEO, CFO, General Counsel Follow Board On Way Out
—Lycos Europe Sells Domain Biz For €34 Million; Danish And Shopping Portals Will Follow
—Cost-Conscious Regional Papers Consider Outsourcing Editorial

This week we posted video of Arianna Huffington interviewing Ashton Kutcher at our L.A. Year-End Review and Mixer. We also released the latest report from our research director, Lauren Rich Fine, on online news and political sites.

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has acquired a 30 percent stake in Indian telephone-directory search service called Call Ezee, which is owned by Network Management Co., reports Reuters. Yahoo’s cash infusion will help the company expand its reach from covering 14 cities to up to 50, and grow its information data base five-fold to 10 million numbers. It also seeks to improve call volumes by up to 10 times by year-end 2009. Currently, Call Ezee is estimated to generate about 10,000 calls a day, according to San Francisco Business Times. The company’s competition includes Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which has launched local search in India; JustDial; AskLaila, which is creating local search content and reviews about companies; and Guruji.com, which is funded by Sequoia Capital and is primarily Internet based and is becoming more of a general search engine for India.

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has made a strategic investment in Info Network Management Company (INMAC), a phone directory search company based in Chennai that offers online and voice-powered directory assistance. Yahoo bought a 30 percent stake in INMAC, known for its Call Ezee service, and will gain at least one spot on the board. There’s also a revenue-sharing component, though IDG says financial specifics were not disclosed. The two companies will integrate their business lists, giving users of Yahoo Local and other properties more in-depth listings of local companies and services; additional projects may follow.

Merchandising company Myntra and printing company Printo have formed a partnership to beat bad times.

As the economy is set for a long winter, the companies are exploring innovative ways to survive the rough times. NEA-IndoUS backed Myntra.com, a personalised gifting company, and Sequoia Capital-backed Printo, an online print services firm, have entered into partnership where both the companies will use each other’s marketing channels to sell their products and services. It’s not merger yet, but just a strategic partnership. Mukesh Bansal, CEO of Myntra, denied any equity changing hands.

Bansal explains why the two firms opted for a strategic partnership instead of a merger: “Myntra and Printo are into extremely different businesses with different core operations, hence operating the two businesses under the same company would not have made sense. Hence we went in for a strategic partnership.”

So post-partnership, Myntra will be able to offer its personalised products such as calendars, posters, photo book, diaries etc through Printo outlets. Printo, on the other hand, will be allowed to offer a significantly enhanced product catalogue supported by Myntra.

According to company estimates, corporate gifting market in India is estimated to be over Rs 5,000 crore and the total market for personalised products is over Rs 10,000 crore. Both, Myntra and Printo expect a joint revenue of over Rs 100 crore over 3 years as a result of the strategic partnership.

Myntra.com was started in late 2006 by a group of IIT/IIM graduates and now has a team of 65 people. The primary concept of Myntra.com is to provide a platform for personalized products and gifts. Myntra.com has developed a community of Creative Designers who have published over 20,000 designs in the last 12 months.

Printo is a retail chain that provides consumers and businesses with print services and products.  Printo offers a single interface for a range of print products like business cards, marketing collateral, reports, calendars, diaries, greetings, invitation cards, personalised print products and branding signages. Its clients include Cafe Coffee Day, Infosys, Wipro, Dell and Titan.

This story has been provided by our content partner VCCircle