India's Reliance Big TV Launches Interactive TV Stock-Tracking Application

Indian satellite-TV operator, Reliance Big TV, has launched an interactive TV stock-tracking application on its OpenTV-powered platform. Dubbed iStock and offered in association with the Reliance Money arm of Reliance Big TV's corporate parent, Reliance Communications, the new application is billed as providing information about both Indian and international stock indexes and currencies, news on stocks and markets, and various value-added services including a personal portfolio manager. Reliance Big TV claims that the new app is India's first portfolio-tracking interactive TV app. "The iStock launch is an excellent illustration of the Reliance ADA Group's successful effort to draw synergies of its domain expertise across various sectors," Reliance Communications president, Mahesh Prasad, said in a prepared statement. "The iStock application is part of our endeavor to offer customers unique and differentiated content and enhance their overall interaction with the Reliance Big TV brand. Since the launch of Reliance Big TV, we have been at the forefront of driving DTH penetration in India. We escalated the DTH growth story in India with the largest on-ground roll-out of a home entertainment service in India. And we followed this up by acquiring one million customers within 90 days of launch." Added Sudip Bandyopadhyay, managing director of Reliance Money: "At Reliance Money, it is our constant endeavor to innovate and provide our customers with value-added services and increased levels of convenience. As a part of our electronic channel strategy to meet this objective, Reliance Money is already present on the Internet through our trading kiosks and on the mobile. Embracing the DTH platform of Reliance Big TV was the logical next step in providing our customers the added advantage of being able to access Reliance Money's portal content from the comfort of their living rooms."

According to Reliance Big TV, iStock's personal portfolio manager will allow viewers to enter up to 16 stocks from their portfolio and then track those stocks' up and down swings; viewers will be able to edit, delete or replace stocks tracked by the application at any time, the company says. The stocks' movements will also be plotted on charts, in order to make it easier for viewers to visualize trends in their portfolios. According to a report in Indian national newspaper, The Hindu, Reliance Big TV hopes to eventually add the ability to trade stocks to the app (if such a service is allowed by India's Security and Exchange Commission), as well as chat functionality.

Reliance Big TV says that its platform's interactive TV services (branded as iInteractive) are an important part of its strategy to differentiate itself in the market and attract new subscribers, and that it intends to roll out new apps in the future. The company says that, while it currently offers the services--which, in addition to iStock, include iSports (sports scores and stats), iGames, iAstro (daily horoscopes), iCooking (recipes) and iNews (latest headlines)--at no extra charge, it may at some point in the future decide to monetize them "through targeted revenue modules." The company claims that the apps are currently used by over 10% of its subscriber base.