FM e-auctions update: While Metro bids increase, many see no movement

Twelve rounds of bidding for FM Radio, Phase 3 (Batch 1) e-auctions are over. Trends are more or less same as they were the day before.

There has been a lot of talk about evolving middle India, advertisers shifting focus and coming of age of mini metros and tier one cities. Radio players, however, obviously believe metros are where the right audience group and advertising money is.

What is surprising, however, isno qualifying bid for Chandigarh. Isn’t it one of the most affluent cities in India? Equally surprising is Varanasi not getting any qualifying bids – with the amount of action happening there, one would have expected some interest.

Leading the way are Mumbai and Delhi, with Delhi provisional winning price reaching almost neck to neck with that of Mumbai.

Ahmedabad and Pune too saw upward movement on day three. Ahmedabad Rs 20,53,34,787.00 up from Rs 16,89,29,439.00with excess demand of 3 for a single channel available and Pune Rs 23,95,41,572.00 from Rs 19,70,71,446.00 on day three with four bidders for its two available channels.

Hyderabad (Rs. 18,00,00,000.00) with three bidders for its four channels and  Lucknow (Rs. 14,00,55,000) with only one bidder for three available channels saw no movement at all.

Chandigarh (base price: Rs. 15,76,61,595.00), Cochin (Rs. 10,32,03,505.00), Udaipur (Rs. 1,06,22,650.00) and Varanasi (2,14,22,100.00) did not see any qualifying bid even on day three.

There are a few small cities which have not seen any bidding interest so far. The ones that caught attention among these are Asansol, Gulbarga, Mangalore, Mysore (surprise!), Puducherry, Shillong, Sholapur, Siligury, Surat, Tirupati and Vijayawada.