NDTV Success Story: The Journey of Becoming an India's Number One Media Company

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Have you ever been so affected by watching a piece of particular news on the television, or for that matter, an advertisement that made you feel a certain way? Indeed, the media industry is powerful enough to influence you with its content.

Thanks to the invention of newspapers, cinemas, radios, television, etc, we can live a life that is not just about going to offices and working. These are the crucial part that makes the mass media industry so interesting.

Media, without question, enhances the personality of society. These days, a media career is considered to be the best career option out of many. Due to this, the mass media industry is gaining a lot of popularity over these years.

We are pretty sure you must have come across this news channel, NDTV, which stands for New Delhi Television Ltd. The news channel was founded by the journalist couple - Prannoy Lal Roy and Radhika Roy in 1984.

It is an Indian news media business specializing in broadcast and internet news distribution. The company is also making headlines that it will be acquired by the Adani group, run by India’s richest man Gautam Adani.

In this article, we present you the success story of NDTV. Discover all the information about how NDTV was started by the duo in 1984, its brief startup story, its channels and subsidiaries, the challenges and controversies faced, mergers and acquisitions, and more.

NDTV - Company Highlights

NDTV - About and How Does It Work?
NDTV - Industry Details
NDTV - Founders and Team
NDTV - Startup Story
NDTV - Mission and Vision
NDTV - Name, Tagline, Logo
NDTV - Business Model
NDTV - Revenue Model
NDTV - Challenges/ Controversies Faced
NDTV - Investments
NDTV - Shareholders
NDTV - Online and Social Media Presence
NDTV - Awards and Achievements
NDTV - Competitors
NDTV - Future Plans

NDTV - About and How Does It Work?

Founded in 1984 by Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, New Delhi Television Ltd., or in short NDTV, is an Indian news media organization that concentrates on broadcast and internet news publishing. The new channel has been maintaining its legacy for 38 years.

It is now India's most viewed, reliable, and recognized news network, as well as a pioneer in Internet content. The reason is that it independently started news broadcasting in India, and is credited with founding the country's first 24x7 news channel and lifestyle channel.

NDTV is now predominantly an internet corporation, with its flagship website - www.ndtv.com, ranking first in India for general news.

NDTV has channels like NDTV 24x7 (In English), NDTV India (In Hindi), and India's first 2-in-1 channel NDTV Profit for Business, and NDTV Prime for entertainment and infotainment-related updates. The company continues to set the bar in journalism with its creative content and unwavering integrity through these channels.

Its channel NDTV 24x7 was created in 1998 in collaboration with Star India. Along with this, 24x7 is India's sole English News Channel that is broadcast in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia, the Middle East, South Africa, New Zealand, Mauritius, and the majority of SAARC countries to reach out to the Indian Diaspora.

The company has expanded its brand portfolio throughout these years in order to capitalize on different opportunities. Subsidiaries like NDTV converge the resources between television, Internet, and mobile. On the other hand, NDTV Worldwide provides high-end consultancy to the local news channels in order to establish them in the worldwide markets.

NDTV - Industry Details

In India, media plays an important role and is making a significant impact on the economy. As per reports, the global media industry's worth is expected to reach around $2.93 trillion by the end of 2026.

NDTV - Founders and Team

NDTV was founded by husband and wife duo, Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy in 1984.

Prannoy Roy

Prannoy Roy is known as an Indian economist, journalist, CA, and author, and is also credited for pioneering continuous contributions to the field of news and journalism. On October 15, 1949, in Calcutta, West Bengal Pannoy Roy was born. He was the son of P. L. Hurricane Roy, who worked as an executive at an MNC in Calcutta.

The grandfather of Prannoy Roy, Paresh Lal Roy was an amateur boxer and a traffic superintendent. He was popular as the "Father of Indian Boxing" majorly for popularising the sport across the nation.

Prannoy Roy is a graduate of the Queen Mary University of London. Prannoy Roy became a Chartered Accountant in 1975. He was also reported to become a fellow at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. After which, he completed his studies in India at the Delhi School of Economics, where he earned a Ph.D. in agricultural economics in 1978.

Before co-founding NDTV along with his wife, Prannoy Roy worked as a consultant at PwC till 1983. He had also worked as an associate professor at his alma mater, the Delhi School of Economics. His career as a journalist began by covering the general election for DoordarshanPrannoy Roy, in collaboration with psephologist Dorab Sopariwala, wrote The Verdict: Decoding India's Elections in 2019.

Prannoy Roy was also recorded to receive the fellowship from  Leverhulme Trust (UK) along with the Queen Mary prize for his BSc result and an OPOS scholarship at the Doon School in order to attend Haileybury College. In 2015, he received the Mumbai Press Club's Red Ink award for lifetime achievement for his endless contributions to news television and journalism. Presently, Prannoy Roy is the executive co-chairperson of NDTV.

Radhika Roy

Radhika Roy was born on May 7, 1949, in Calcutta, West Bengal. She is also a degree holder in English literature from the University of Delhi (Miranda House). She also holds a post-graduate degree in the field of broadcast journalism from the New School for Social Research, New York, United States.

Apart from that, she has also done a course in the field of television production from the New York University Tisch School of Arts. Presently, Radhika Roy serves as the executive co-chairperson of NDTV. Prior to NDTV, she used to work at the editorial desk of The Indian Express. In addition, she has also worked as a news coordinator for India Today magazine.

Radhika Roy as a person is considered to be quiet and well-liked by her employees. She holds many achievements. Radhika was named one of 50 key women personalities in the history of television and radio transmission by the Paley Center for Media, a museum dedicated to broadcasting history.

She was also included in Fortune India's list of the 50 most powerful women in the Indian industry. The total stake owned by Radhika is about 16.32%. Along with her husband, Radhika controls an extra 29.18% share through a 50:50 holding entity named RRPR Holding Pvt Ltd.

Ravish Kumar

Ravish Kumar is Senior Executive Editor of NDTV India. Ravish has anchored many shows including the names Prime Time, Hum Log, Des ko Baat, etc. He is also a degree holder from Delhi University affiliated college Deshbandhu. Later, he enrolled in the Indian Institute of Mass Communication's post-graduate diploma program in Hindi journalism.

He is also awarded Ramnath Goenka Excellence under the category of Journalism Award two consecutive times in the year 2019. He also succeeded in becoming the fifth Indian journalist to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award. The Indian Express named him one of the 100 most important Indians in 2016, while the Mumbai Press Club honored him journalist of the year.

Ravish Kumar is also a great author with his work including the titles like The Free Voice: On Democracy, Ishq Mein Shahr Hona (in Hindi), A City Happens In Love and many other books on different topics.

Apart from anchoring the shows, he was also featured on "Shut Up Ya Kunal", a stand-up comedy show hosted by Kunal Kamra. Ravish majorly discussed his reporting and personal life on the show. Whereas he was also featured in another show named "Off the Record" which was Samdish Bhatia's show. Ravish Kumar's life partner, Nayana Dasgupta, is a lecturer at the  Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi. The couple has two daughters.

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NDTV - Startup Story

Humble beginnings with Doordarshan

The story behind the NDTV falls back to the year 1984 as the production house for different news segments for the public broadcasting of the Doordarshan and for other international news channels also. The company became the first independent television news channel in 1888.

Later on, Doordarshan was reported to hire the networks in order to produce a larger coverage for the Indian general elections and budget session specials. Both the efforts were well received and appreciated by the people.    

The first televised live coverage of an election was also performed by NDTV during the Indian general election of 1989. It used national hotlines and contained visual graphics, discussions, and debates.

After some years, the company came up with a proposal for Doordarshan to migrate its output to a daily half-hourly news program on DD Metro, the second Doordarshan channel. The concept was accepted, and the News Tonight news broadcast was started. With this, the company came up with many new shows like The News Hour and Good Morning India for Doordarshan.

Contract with Rupert Murdoch and Star News

In 1998, NDTV signed a five-year agreement with the Start Network's Rupert Murdoch. The agreement ruled that the NDTV will create all the news material for the network and the finance venture will be handled by Murdoch's News Corporation subsidiary named News Television in India. NDTV programming was also included on two 9:00 p.m. news programs on Star Plus and Star World.

Within a month of its start, NDTV rolled out its own news website "ndtv.com". The website was focused on broadcasting the live webcasts of the original productions, which eventually helps in increasing the daily visits of the website with its count tallying at 55,000 daily visits.

NDTV also worked on launching a news bulletin on Vijay TV and making it their first step to enter into a regional market. The news bulletin was launched in the Tamil language and on the station owned by Star Network.

Later in 2002, there were clashes between NDTV and Star India, due to which the contract was never renewed. Started as Independent News Channel

After ending its partnership with Star India, NDTV started as an independent broadcaster. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were known to provide equity money to the firm.

In that particular year 2003, the company launched NDTV India and NDTV 24x7. The following year, NDTV came out as a public company with its independent directors N.R. Narayan Murthy and Tarun Das. Tarun Das is the chief mentor of the Confederation of Indian Industry and N.R. Narayan Murthy is the creator of Infosys.

In June 2006, NDTV announced a partnership with the Southeast Asian media business Astro to develop the Bahasa Melayu entertainment channel Astro Awani, with NDTV owning a 20% investment in the joint venture.

To make its presence more strong enough, the company began expanding into the general entertainment and lifestyle programming industries in 2007. On September 07, 2007, another subsidiary launched with the name NDTV Lifestyle. The first channel launched by NDTV Lifestyle in India was NDTV Good Times. w

NDTV Lifestyle also signed a deal with the United Breweries Group for a branding partnership between Kingfisher lager and NDTV Good Times in 2009.

The business was visualizing a genre of channels focused on localized news and an already established NDTV MetroNation. The main plan was to launch a number of channels mainly dedicated to the metropolitan cities of India such as Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai.

NDTV - Mission and Vision

The mission statement of NDTV is, "To collaborate with people and organizations in the communities we serve to bring quality programming, learning opportunities, and economic development to our region."

NDTV's vision statement reads, "To be broadly recognized for excellence in Public Television."

NDTV - Name, Tagline, Logo

NDTV 24x7's Tagline says, "Fight for Change"

NDTV India Tagline says, "Khabar Wahi Jo Sach Dikhaye"

NDTV - Business Model

NDTV's business operations involve buying, selling advertising on radio, television, video, and cable, etc. both within national and international boundaries.

The company's business sites are spread as offices and studios throughout the nation that contain India's most cutting-edge production, newsgathering, and archival capabilities, as well as award-winning show and creative teams.

NDTV has four main channels through which it does its business:

• NDTV 24x7 - Offers news in English by covering a wide variety of information related to national and international news, sports, weather, and entertainment.
• NDTV India - NDTV's 24-hour Hindi news channel
• NDTV Profit - Features all financial and business news
• NDTV Prime - This channel by NDTV covers interesting news in categories like Gadgets, Automobiles, Education, Careers, Property, Entertainment, Art, Comedy, and more.

NDTV is also known to have many subsidiaries. Some of them are NDTV Convergence Limited, Red Pixels Ventures Limited, NDTV Networks Limited, NDTV Worldwide Limited, NDTV Media Limited, NDTV Labs Limited, Delta Softpro Private Limited, Delta Softpro Private Limited, On-Demand Transportation Technologies Limited, Fifth Gear Ventures Limited, OnArt Quest Limited, BrickbuyBrick Projects Limited, Redster Digital Limited, NDTV Lifestyle Holdings Limited, NDTV Lifestyle Limited, NDTV Ethnic Retail Limited, NDTV Ethnic Retail Limited-Consolidated.

The company's latest initiative Mojarto.com, is India's largest art marketplace of artworks handpicked from great artists, and it offers affordable and outstanding Indian Art & Collectibles such as original paintings, digital prints, jewelry, and other décor items.

NDTV is also actively engaged in offering EPG services through its initiative, UREQA. NDTV is also known to provide various metadata services which roughly fall under the category of rich multimedia information, channel ratings, programming, and scheduling the available data in multiple languages including English Hindi, Tamil, etc.

NDTV - Revenue Model

NDTV's primary source of revenue comes from advertising on its four channels. The company ties up with different brands and organizations to run various product advertisements on its channels. From the beginning of its inception, NDTV was smart to find that demand for programmatic buying among their new and current advertisers began to rise steadily.

NDTV operates as one of India’s ruling online news sources with over 119 million unique visitors per month. The channel NDTV India also gets paid annually by YouTube. It reportedly has over 14.8 million subscribers on its YouTube channel.

Very recently, the company claimed that its overall costs increased 6.94% to Rs 83.33 crore in Q1 FY 2022-23 from Rs 77.92 crore the previous year.

NDTV - Challenges/ Controversies Faced

If one gets success, on the other hand, the other hand is tied with difficulties and challenges. This was the case with NDTV. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) issued a notice in 2015 for an alleged breach of the Foreign Exchange Management Act. The government banned the Hindi language news channel NDTV India in 2016 because it posed a danger to national security.

The challenges for NDTV did not end there. NDTV was blamed with the tax reassessment notice in 2015 for the blame of tax evasion for the years 2009-10. The channel also faced charges made by CIB for defrauding ICICI Bank and was also involved in the TRP scam.

Gautam Adani plans to have a majority stake in NDTV

The headline which is grabbing attention all over the media is the Adani Group's attempt to have a majority stake in the news channel.

The Adani Group is a multinational conglomerate run by Gautam Adani, India's richest man, who has announced a hostile bid to takeover NDTV. The group plans to have a stake of 29.18% and plans to launch an open offer to purchase an additional 26% shareholding in the company.

This has raised many concerns as Gautam Adani has close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Many officials are stating that the acquisition effort is similar to the previous takeover of the major news channel Network18 by Mukesh Ambani, another billionaire with close links to Narendra Modi.

Things took a controversial side when the channel's founders were taken aback by the buyout attempt stating that Adani Group had neither contacted nor consulted them, nor did the transaction have their agreement.

As per the NDTV, the transfer of the RRPR's stake can not be completed. The prime reason behind it was the regulatory limitation applied to the promoters in order to prevent them from having an access to the market until November 2022. The transfer will be required to have a clearance from SEBI. However, Adani has rejected this reason claiming that the purchase did not necessitate SEBI clearance.

NDTV - Investments

On July 17, 2019, NDTV Limited invested in MobiKwik. MobiKwik is a fintech startup that offers a platform for online payments, life insurance, and loans. NDTV invested ₹8.7 Crore in a Series E funding round of Mobikwik.

NDTV - Shareholders

The co-founders, Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy are the business's promoters, with a controlling position of 61.45%; individually holding 16.32% and 15.95% of the shares, respectively, and collectively holding an additional 29.18% through RRPR, a holding company. Other investors include the Mauritius-based LTS Investment Fund and the Vikasa India EIF I Fund, which own 9.75% and 4.42% of the company, respectively.

Both companies have ties to the Adani Group. The LTS Investment Fund, in particular, has investments worth 19,328 crores ($2.4 billion) in 13 Indian companies, four of which are part of the Adani Group, these four investments account for approximately 98% of their total investments worth Rs 18,916.7 crores.

NDTV - Online and Social Media Presence

As the company belongs to the Mass Media Industry, it knows how to leave its footprint on the social media platform as well. The channel has a strong presence on major social media platforms like - LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. It is also present in other modes of online platforms.

LinkedIn - 453,288 followers

Facebook - 9.4 million followers

Twitter - 17.3 million followers

YouTube - 14.8 million followers

NDTV - Awards and Achievements

NDTV has received many awards such as:

• Excellence Award in Environment Reporting
• Excellence Award in Business & Economy Reporting
• Mumbai Press Club RedInk Awards May 2018
• Best Reporting of Human Interest Stories: Maya Sharma, NDTV 24x7

NDTV - Competitors

The top competitors of NDTV are:

1. Zee News
2. Sun TV network
3. Prime focus
4. Saregama India
5. Network18
6. Dish TV India
7. India Today
8. CNN
9. BBC
10. OutlookIndia

NDTV - Future Plans

At present, there is no defined statement in regard to the future plans of NDTV. At the moment, the company is waiting for SEBI's approval if Adani Group's acquisition is valid or not. The company claims that Gautam Adani is 'deeply overleveraged'. It says that Gautam Adani's over-ambitious debt-funded growth plans have led him to fall into the debt trap.

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Conclusion

New Delhi Television Ltd or NDTV is an Indian media company that has been in the market for almost 38 years now. It was started in 1984 by the joint efforts of an economist and a journalist.

And with the passing of time, the firm grew up to be one of the most successful media companies. Some of the highlights of NDTV company are shared in the above context including its startup story, challenges faced, and future plans.  

FAQs

How does NDTV make money?

NDTV gets 90% of its revenue collected from different advertisements shown on its platform.

Which is the best news channel in India?

Some of the best news channels in India are ABP Networks, India Tv, Aajtak, CNN News, etc.

Who is the CEO of NDTV?

Narayan Rao is the CEO of NDTV.

What is the NDTV app?

The NDTV app is a mobile-friendly application specially created by NDTV to have an easy mobile experience for its users.