Last week, top STAR executives including STAR Hong Kong CEO Paul Aiello, STAR India CEO Uday Shankar and COO Jagdish Kumar were in Bangalore for meetings with possible joint venture partners for the print foray. The company is said to be in talks with Vijay Mallya's UB Group.
When contacted, Shankar said: "We do not comment on rumours." Ravi Nedungani, president and CFO of the UB group, denied the news.
However, media industry sources said STAR has been exploring opportunities in the print media space for a while, especially after Shankar, a former journalist, became the head of its Indian operations.
He's learnt to have told press persons earlier that newspapers is a very exciting business, though currently it is restrictive in India. Foreign direct investment in the print media is capped at 26 per cent.
STAR can bring in foreign titles from its parent News Corporation, which owns nearly 40 newspapers in Australia, the UK, the US and Fiji, including The Times in the UK and Wall Street Journal in the US.
STAR's prospective foray could heat up the battle in the Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) print media space in India since Network 18, the Raghav Bahl-promoted broadcasting company, is also getting ready to launch Pearson's business daily Financial Times in India.
Mallya owned Vijay TV, which was sold to UTV and later acquired by STAR India. He also had a stake in Asian Age which he later sold off.
