[Sydney, AUSTRALIA] Youth-oriented entertainment and
multimedia network K*Grind will move to
a future in Asia through partnership, after it signed a Heads of Agreement
with Union Pacific Limited (UPL) and property developer MetroLand Australia
to secure funding.
UPL and MetroLand will acquire 51 percent of equity in K*Grind through
share placement, adding to the media company’s current shareholders that
include Macquarie Technology Funds Management, AMWIN, Acer and Wavelink
Capital.
MetroLand’s investment will be through an initial subscription of
AUD $1 million (US $600,000) and a subsequent subscription of AUD $4 million
(US $2.4 million) upon completion of due diligence.
K*Grind is seeing a brighter immediate future in Asia as “Australian
broadband is still starting”, said K*Grind’s David Keane in a
teleconference today. “It will be huge in Australia with the rollout of
DSL. In Asia it is happening now.”
Although K*Grind reports it has access to a global annual disposable
income of AUD $417 million (US $250 million), industry speculation has
observed its primary focus on broadband has been less than kind to cash
reserves.
To help it flourish in an environment with a number of technologies
for accessing the Internet, the company has also embraced technologies such
as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Short Message Service (SMS), 3G
mobile networks, Palm OS and television set top boxes.
With this new investment, K*Grind will be able to push its service into
Asia, via MetroLand’s Asian Information Technology connection. This
relationship includes Metroland shareholder, the China-based Harbin
Institute of Technology Group. This is Chaina’s largest distributor of
high-speed network system providers for companies such as Cisco, 3com,
Novell and Lucent Technologies.
