MUMBAI: UTV’s youth broadcast venture, conceived in association with Malaysian media company Astro Measat, has been named Bindass.

The name, says UTV, has been arrived at on the basis of a quantitative Brand Name Test conducted by Synovate India with Indian youth aged 15-24 years.
 
The youth centric channel scheduled for launch in mid 2007 has an outlay of Rs two billion (Rs 200 crore). The plans for the venture include the launch of multiple channels across languages in India and southeast Asia. UTV had earlier entered into a business co-operation arrangement with Astro to set up kid’s channels in Malaysia and Indonesia. Astro Ceria was launched on the Astro platform last year.

The Bindass brand will include the entire gamut of entertainment, including television channels, a mobile channel, three websites, creation of original games, merchandising, retail and nationwide ground events. “The only media we are not entering are radio and print, where we plan to work with strong partners,” says Youth Venture COO Zarina Mehta.

The youth segment in India forms 23 per cent of viewership in over 1,00,000 cable and satellite homes, claims UTV.
 
Adds Mehta, “We have used all our Hungama learnings in creating the new youth brand, including three months of intensive research. Just the name test is not enough; we also conducted a detailed qualitative study with Probe Qualitative Research (PQR), the qualitative division of IMRB International and are in the process of a large quantitative Usage and Attitudes Study with Synovate. The research findings along with our own belief in what the Indian youth want, led us to arrive at Bindass as the name for India’s first local youth entertainment brand.”