Even the Radio Mid-Day West India Pvt. Ltd, which bagged six stations—Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad—is also likely to launch the new stations soon.

Sharik Patel, the station head of Mumbai’s GO 92.5 FM, owned by the Mid-Day group, said, “We will be able to launch new stations, all of which will be music-based, in the next nine to 15 months.”

“We have the business model ready for these stations, but a lot of paper work has to be done before we can get the license and launch the stations,” he added.

New stations will not be launched in metro cities alone; smaller cities across the country will also rock to the music soon. On January 13, new frequencies in several north Indian cities, including Hissar, Karnal, Shimla, Patiala, Bareilly, Varanasi, Aligarh, Kota, Bikaner, Jodhpur and Ajmer, were given to private players.

Apart from the 120 new frequencies already bagged by numerous players, auctions of more new frequencies, under B, C and D categories for cities in the west and the south, are scheduled for January 27 and February 3 respectively.

In Category B (population above 1 million and up to 2 million) 57 stations for 17 cities will be put on the block. Category C (population above 0.3 million and up to 1 million) will offer 170 channels for 48 cities, and Category D (population above 0.1 million and up to 0.3 million) 47 channels for 13 cities.