MUMBAI: London headquartered United Radio today became the first international radio consultancy company to set up an office in India. Indian radio stations can now look to the international experience to improve their ratings and increase their revenues.

The company aims to provide its services to the existing operators, investors, government and the regulatory bodies. United Radio has been the consultant to Malayalam Manorma's Radio Mango and Radio City for their programming and music strategies in the past.

The focus of the company will be on creating new programming formats, setting up newsrooms and providing training to existing operators. It will also provide business planning and support services to the new entrants in the radio business, following the likely announcement of the Phase III of FM licensing in India early next year, as indicated by the Minister of Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni at the India Economic Summit of the World Economic Forum on 9 November 2009.

United Radio is also in talks with several companies in India to set up India's first Radio News agency, which will provide content for news and current affair activities either directly to radio stations or through All India Radio. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is considering allowing news broadcasts to private FM radio stations.

The Indian operations of the company will be headed by Sunil Kumar, a leading consultant in the Indian radio industry. Kumar has advised the Bhaskar Group, the Muthoot Group, Lokmat Publications, Neutral Publishing, CCL Media and several other promoters of radio companies in India. Kumar has also headed the radio businesses of Mid-Day Multimedia and Zee Telefilms.

Explaining the scope of services to be offered by United Radio in India, Director and Senior Partner Paul Chantler says, Our services will supplement the experience Indian operators have gathered over the last three years. We bring to India the knowledge and insights of the UK radio industry which is nearly 30 years old and has seen virtually every phase of market development. United Radio partners have worked for almost all the large radio companies in the UK. Between us we also have the experience of working with the country's regulatory authority, Ofcom, and the public service broadcaster, the BBC. Here too we would like to approach the regulator, the public broadcaster and other stakeholders to offer our services....

Indian partner Sunil Kumar states, The knowledge and experience that United Radio brings from radio businesses across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Asia will work as a catalyst for the growth for our relatively young Indian market. We'll combine this experience with our in-depth understanding of the media behaviour of the Indian audiences at all geographic, social and economic levels to offer our clients innovative programming strategies, training, format solutions and well defined tactical products. We have developed some exciting India specific services and solutions, which we'll announce soon....

United Radio will also work as an interface between investors in the UK who are considering investment in India's radio industry, which is expected to grow a CAGR of 14.2 percent over 2009-13 and reach a size of ?210 million (Rs.1630 crores) by 2013, according to a FICCI-KPMG study.