(3 February 2009 2:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Advertising vet and former Zee TV head Sandeep Goyal and his wife Tanya Goyal have found an equity partner for their online company Mogae Digital. And that partner is Malaysia-based media giant Astro Group which today announced that it was picking up a 50 per cent stake in Mogae for $5 million.

The duo's goal: launch a mobile social network services portal, which will enable even basic mobile phone users to stay connected with each others, apart from being entertained, engaged and rewarded for their networking activity.

Mogae Digital is scheduled to go live with the offering in the second quarter of 2009. It will also be introducing mobile games and mobile comics (momics). Additionally, it has plans to launch a local search engine in third quarter of this year.

The Goyals are the Indian JV partners of Japanese advertising major Dentsu. The Goyals have three ad agencies under the Dentsu umbrella, handling Toyota, Honda, Canon, Raymond, Thomas Cook and FedEx, among other advertisers.

"Mogae Digital intends to be at the forefront of the content revolution that will soon unfold with the launch of 3G services in India. But our unique model, while preparing for 3G related opportunities, focuses first on the available 300 million current mobile users. Any phone that supports a basic 160 character SMS is a target audience for us," says Sandeep who is the company's chairman.

Astro Group executive director Raghavendra Madhav adds: "Mogae Digital has the creative understanding required to speak to diverse audiences in the emerging new media space of the internet and mobile. Given Astro's already large interest in the media space, Mogae Digital will be a good addition to our bouquet."

The Astro Group operates a pay TV channel on the DTH platform and 12 radio stations in Malaysia. In India, Astro has interests in DTH player Sun Direct as well as radio players Red FM and SFM. Also, telecom operator Aircel is a part of the Astro family in India.