Boradcast Worldwide needs an estimated total investment of Rs 120-140 crore for the regional television channel project over the next three years.The company is currently undergoing the second round of funding via private placements, Ratikant Basu, promoter of Broadcast Worldwide, said.

``We will approach the public to raise about Rs 100 crore within the next six months to fund the regional language television channel project,'' Basu said adding the remaining money is expected to come in from the ongoing private placements.

BWW is a 50:50 joint venture between Basu & associates and Sivasankaran's Sterling Infotech. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch owns a five per cent stake within R Basu & associates' 50 per cent equity stake.

After the current round of private placements, Basu and Sterling's stake is expected to be diluted to 33 per cent each, he said adding that venture capital funds as well as high-networth individuals will hold the remaining equity.

Basu said the joint venture has a provision whereby Murdoch's stake may be hiked to 20 per cent ``but there is no such request from his side so far''.Basu said Unit Trust of India has invested Rs 4.5 crore whereas a Guajart-based venture capital has pumped in another Rs 5 crore in the private placement round, which will be closed by the month end.

``We will get approximately Rs 63 crore after the private placement round is over, and this should suffice for the company's first year of operations. Coupled with the IPO proceeds and the expected continuing revenue, we hope to achieve a breakeven within the next three years,'' Basu said.

He said these projections were based on a revenue model rather than the cost-based projection many companies made, adding the accumulated losses of the first three years of operation would be wiped out by the early part of the fifth year.

In drawing out a comparison with Zee's Alpha brand of regional channels, Basu said the basic strategy of the two channles was quite different.``While Zee began with a pan-Asian channel to build brand equity and then followed it with regional channels, we at BWW have begun with region-specific programming and this may culminate in a national channel later on,'' he said.

Tara at present has four regional channels in Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi and is planning three more within the first year of Broadcast Worldwide's operations.