(5 November 2007 6:30 pm)

MUMBAI: NDTV is expanding its presence on the new media platforms through its wholly owned subsidiary NDTV Convergence.

The company is planning to launch a slate of portals in different genres over the next six months.

First in line is a mobile portal called NDTV Active which goes live on 15 November.

NDTV Convergence CEO Sanjay Trehan says, "Active is India's first full service mobile portal which will carry news, views, cricket, astrology, talks, video amongst a host of other things. It is currently in beta testing stage and we are looking to launch it on 15 November."

This will be followed by the launch of a Hindi news portal - NDTV Khabar. "There is growing Hindi news readership on the web. We are, therefore, setting up the information and content architecture and developing the backend technology for our Hindi news portal NDTV Khabar. We plan to launch it in two months," he says.

Besides this, NDTV Convergence will also launch portals in the genres of lifestyle, Bollywood and education. "All these portals are being created in-house and will launch in the next six months. We have developed a key product differentiator in each of these categories. It is a significant value addition to the proposition," says Trehan.

NDTV Convergence will be developing the content for these portals in-house, but it may consider outsourcing for technology requirements, says Trehan.

"We are also looking to acquire portals in some genres as well, but it's too early to talk about it at the moment," he says.

NDTV Convergence is also expanding its production team for the launch of these portals. "When I joined the organisation in March, it was a team of 25. We have now upped the strength to about 60 and over the next few months, this will go up to 100," he said.