(12 March 2010 9:20 pm)

MUMBAI: As part of its strategy to exit from bad businesses, TV18 is selling its entire 50 per cent stake in Jobstreet.com India.

The joint venture made no progress and TV18 has taken a hit of Rs 25 million in the entire exercise, a source in the company says. The shares have been sold back to the partner, Jobstreet.com Singapore.

Floated in late 2006, the joint venture company was to tap into the rapidly growing job portal space in India and provide consolidated value to Web18, the internet and mobile arm of TV18. The market cap of Info Edge, the holding company of naukri.com, is Rs 25.09 billion. Though Info Edge has other smaller properties like www.jeevansathi.com, www.99acres.com, www.quadranglesearch.com and www.shiksha.com, it definitely provides an indicative valuation of a successful job portal in India.

"We are streamlining our businesses. This was one line of activity where we had no control over it and we were joint venture partners," says the source.

Web18 had earlier conducted a major surgery at the time of economic downturn, getting rid of one-third of its workforce which had peaked to a strength of over 650 professionals.
Web18 had cobbled together a string of portals including Moneycontrol.com, In.com, Ibnlive.com and cricketnext.com. It had to shelve its plans of raising money through an ADR (American Depository Receipt) issue.

Web18 had posted a net loss of Rs 304.44 million on a revenue of Rs 499.11 million for the three quarters of the current fiscal. "We are going to be Ebitda positive in the fourth-quarter as we have controlled costs. We expect to operationally break even in the next fiscal," the source says.