Mumbai: Dominant markets data providers to the investment community Reuters India Pvt. Ltd and Bloomberg Lp are being challenged by a brash Indian upstart, NewsWire18 Pvt. Ltd.
Cost advantage: NewsWire18 CEO Pankaj Aher says the firm is concentrating on introducing cheaper, value-based products to capture the market.
At stake are attractive customers in capital markets as well as banking and financial sectors who look for real-time data on desktop computers or terminals, coupled with historical databases, allowing them to make quick, informed calls in the marketplace.
While both Reuters and Bloomberg also have large, global news operations, it is the data services that remain huge profit centres.
NewsWire18, a subsidiary of Television Eighteen India Ltd—which owns CNBC TV18 and CNBC Awaz news channels—started about a year ago. It has about 100 journalists, higher than the combined India-focused news staff of both rivals as well as a few others, a number that it says will increase by 50% in 2008.
NewsWire18 hopes to turn its India focus into a competitive advantage, noting that it covers results from about 1,000 Indian companies every quarter which, the company claims, is more than the coverage offered by its larger rivals.
On top of this, NewsWire18 says its cost is less than half the rates being charged by Reuters and Bloomberg.
Pankaj Aher, chief executive of NewsWire18, insists many Reuters and Bloomberg users are switching to the new offering and claims to have “several hundred” terminal subscribers and a business that is growing at 50% every quarter.
Mint couldn’t independently ascertain these claims. Some active terminal users in Mumbai say it is too early for NewsWire18 to dent the duopoly of Reuters and Bloomberg.
Mint spoke to several domestic and international brokerage houses and banks, such as Centrum Capital Ltd, KR Choksey Shares and SecuritiesPvt. Ltd, Angel Broking Ltd, CLSA Asia-Pacific, Religare Securities Ltd, Anand Rathi Commodities, Development Credit Bank Ltd and Kotak Securities Ltd. In most instances, they said NewsWire18’s penetration level was low.
“It’s too early to say that people will start unsubscribing Reuters and Bloomberg and take NewsWire18 terminal. But, NewsWire18 gives you more news than the others and sometimes it is faster too,” says Deven Choksey, managing director, KR Choksey Securities.
Amitabh Chakraborty, president of equity at Religare, says it might not be possible to easily switch loyalty. “All my clients are sitting on (using) Bloomberg. We chat, even send mails through our Bloomberg terminals. I cannot change it unless they are also changing it. Besides, once you start using a terminal, you get used to it. It is not easy to switch.”
It is estimated that there are about 5,000 terminals in India and, despite the continued rise in the stock markets, the growth in the number of terminals hasn’t kept pace.