Agri Gold Group, a 3,500 crore entity in the state of Andhra Pradesh, will soon foray into the television broadcast space with a specialised travel channel named Travel Trendz TV. The channel is founded by R Rama Rao Avvas, who is the chairman of the group. For the record, the Agri Gold Group's core competencies include media and advertising, agro and farm products, real estate, infrastructure, theme parks and resorts.

Housed under the unit Tourism & Travel Media Entertainment, Travel Trendz TV will go live in the second quarter of 2012. The channel will be headquartered in Hyderabad and will launch with programming in both Hindi and English. Also, the programmes will be subtitled in English. 

The channel notes that in India, most of the programming in the travel and tourism genre is either dubbed international content or very limited local content. Travel Trendz TV programming will focus to meet the needs of the Indian viewer with local content which is original and relevant.

P R Satheesh, president, Travel Trendz TV, says, "The travel space has seen sustained growth year on year. Coupled with the fact that there aren't any channels focusing clearly on this space in India, we have decided to fill the void. The vision is to showcase 5,000 years of India and as we go along, there will be more feeds in languages such as Bengali, Tamil and Telugu."

Earlier last month, the channel had appointed P R Satheesh as president. Teams and offices in the key markets are also under way and there will be more announcements soon, the channel adds.

Avvas says, "The Indian media and entertainment industry is growing at 15-17 per cent CAGR and we intend to be a part of this industry. Through Travel Trendz TV, we aim to educate and inform the growing number of travelling Indians and foreign tourists who are arriving in India about India and its diversity."