Zee Group chairman Subhash Chandra will go all out to back Zee Next in the current fiscal. The flanking channel of Zee TV will have a peak investment of Rs 3 billion, indicating that Hindi general entertainment channels have to spend more on programming and marketing due to a fierce competition in the marketplace. "There is a full-blown expansion plan for Zee Next over the next two months. The focus will be on programming and distribution. The channel's peak investment requirement is Rs 3 billion on the channel," says a source in the company. Zee Next was launched in December 2007, but failed to make much impact as it faced distribution problems. Zee TV's sibling channel also had less hours of original programming. "We will be spending more money on distribution and are also increasing original content on the channel," the source adds. On the regional front, Zee will be launching its Tamil general entertainment channel by July-end with an investment plan of Rs 900 million. Zee has already started buying Tamil movies even as it prepares to enter the most difficult turf in South India with Sun Network dominating the market. Zee expects the new business losses for FY'09 to be around Rs 600 million. "The losses from the existing new businesses including the Telugu and Kannada channel will come down to Rs 150 million in the fiscal. But there will be new losses from the Tamil channel," the source explains. Zee expects the Tamil channel to break even in three years. The Telugu and Kannada channels have started generating pay revenues from the last quarter of FY'08. "Zee News Ltd is targeting a higher growth of 40 per cent in subscription revenues in the current fiscal. The company will be adding a Tamil channel. Besides, the other two southern language channels have started getting pay revenues. We expect the company's advertising income to grow by 30 per cent," the source says. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (Zeel) expects to continue its strong growth in FY'09. The company has given a guidance of 30 per cent growth in advertising as well as subscription revenues in the current fiscal, the source says.