What's-On-India launches social EPG; Integrates Facebook with TV search

Mumbai based What's-On-India, an Indian TV search and Electronic Program Guide (EPG) company, has launched a new product called 'social EPG'. The social EPG will help viewers discover shows, films, matches and documentaries that their social networks are talking about as well as share common interest programs to converse about those shows (basically increase engagement around TV content).

It has basically integrated 'Facebook Login' on its website which means that users now have the choice between logging-in with their existing What's-On-India accounts or opting for login via their Facebook accounts. The basic idea behind this is to enable TV viewers to use Facebook for sharing each other's viewing preferences, discussing shows and discovering new TV shows in the form of recommendations from friends.

"Social TV recommendations are considered powerful due to their viral nature and their ability to create tremendous positive or negative word-of-mouth especially for new shows and program launches. Our social network has different clusters of friends representing different interest groups (tennis buddies, college friends, work contacts etc) and each of these interest groups could collectively or individually spark off discovery of common interest TV shows," said Atul Phadnis, founder and CEO, What's-On-India.

What's On India Media Pvt Ltd (originally set up as Aarohan Media Software Pvt Ltd) was founded by Phadnis in 2005 and the company launched India's first consumer TV guidance channel– What's On India. Its technology vertical powers EPG metadata content for more than 500 TV channels and into set top boxes and devices across cable, DTH, IPTV and mobile TV.

As of now, Facebook Logins are limited to the website but the company is in the process of extending them into its mobile and Tablet apps as well. The next move is to provide these features on the What's-On-India applications (iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, Symbian and Blackberry) and also integrate the same with other social networking platforms such as Twitter and Google+. All of these features will be powered using What's-On-India's proprietary EPG-On-Cloud platform and can be embedded inside third party apps as well.

The company had earlier raised an undisclosed amount in venture funds from Sequoia Capital and Nexus Venture Partners.