Delhi-based media group HT Media has partnered with Marcus Brauchli's North Base Media to launch a media accelerator programme.
Launched on Friday, mediahack.in aims to promote upcoming media and advertising technology entrepreneurs. NBM is an investment firm founded by Brauchli (pictured), a former top editor with the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
The 50/50 joint venture will focus on building and nurturing digital media companies based on original content and advertising-related technologies. It will initially invite ideas from potential entrepreneurs with seven of them to be selected for support and funding this summer.
A selected project can get between $50,000-$100,000 in addition to mentoring and facilitation of market access. Successful applicants will spend several months on the programme, interacting with each other and with leading media and technology thinkers globally.
Such entrepreneurs will help create platforms, products and technologies - which will become important tools to bring news and information to the new audience.
"In a young country like India, there are people bubbling with ideas and are struggling to convert them into success stories. Our initiative is to provide wings to some of them and make them successful entrepreneurs," said HT Media chief executive Rajiv Verma.
NBM - which has already supported more than a dozen media business projects in Latin America - is bullish about opportunities in India. "Mobile and social platforms are transforming the way billions of people consume news around the world... nowhere is that more evident than in India, where 500 million people have access to the internet, many for the first time," said Brauchli.
The programme will be open to students and professionals. "We will reach out to all those who have an idea to create digital media companies," Verma said. "If there is a powerful idea, capital is not a constraint. It's about making sure the idea is not over-capitalised if it fails."
Verma says the funding will be strictly for the media sector and "we would help those who have bubbling ideas, but lack resources". Mediahack.in could pick up a minority stake between 10-30 per cent in the ventures it supports, he added.
HT Media publishes three dailies - Hindustan Times, Hindustan and Mint - and has presence in radio, education and the digital space.