Bhubaneshwar is seeing, surprisingly perhaps, a lot of activity. It had received 5 bids for 1 frequency by the end of Monday with a provisional winning price of just under Rs 1 crore. In fact, it is one of only three cities (the others being Mumbai and Delhi) which has seen an excess demand of 3 or more. By the end of the second day, the number of bids had fallen to 4, though the bid amount increased to around Rs 1.35 crore.
Bhubaneshwar currently has three radio stations in the form of Big FM, Red FM and Radio Chokolate, which is not participating in these auctions. It is safe to assume that three of the five bids came from new entrants—Odisha Television Ltd, Sarthak Films Pvt. Ltd. and Venus Autoworks Pvt. Ltd. In fact, Venus Autoworks had a bidding cap of Rs 79 lakh, which could explain the lessening of number of bids.