Network18 Group — BrandWiki

Network18 Group

Overview

Network18 Media & Investments Limited

type	Public
traded as	bse: 532798 nse: Network18
isin	isin: INE870H01013
industry	Media
founded	December 11, 1996
key people	Adil Zainulbhai (Chairman) Rahul Joshi (MD, CEO and editor-in-chief)
revenue	inr 68879200000
revenue year	2025
operating income	▲ inr 2082600000
income year	2025
net income	inr -5102500000
net income year	2025
assets	inr 83175100000
assets year	2025
equity	inr 46718400000
equity year	2025
num employees	4,886 (2025)
owner	Reliance Industries (56.89%) Equity holdings (43.11%)
homepage	https://www.nw18.com/
footnotes	Financials as of 31 March 2025.‡R1R‡

Network18 Media & Investments Limited (d/b/a Network18 Group) is an Indian media conglomerate owned by the Reliance Industries with 56.89% share headed by Mukesh Ambani and rest of 43.11% is equity holding. Rahul Joshi is the managing director, chief executive officer and group editor-in-chief, and Adil Zainulbhai is the chairman of its board of directors.

Incorporated in 1996 by Geeta and Rakesh Gupta, the company was acquired by Ritu Kapur and Raghav Bahl to be converted into a conglomerate holding company between 2003 and 2006. It oversaw one of the largest collections of media properties in India following its conversion but became encumbered with debt due to aggressive expansions. In 2012, the company entered into a debt agreement with Reliance Industries, through which it was granted a number of channels from the ETV Network. The agreement eventually enabled a hostile takeover of the company in 2014.

History

1996–2007: Acquisition and restructuring

SGA Finance and Management Services was incorporated on 16 February 1996,[2]

2011–2014: Takeover by Reliance Industries

Network18 had made optimistic projections for years but after 2011, it came to face a possible financial collapse and loss of control for its managing director Raghav Bahl.[10] The group had accumulated an outstanding debt of over inr 14000000000 by September 2011. Employees were convinced that the company had expanded too aggressively and the market could not support it. In search of assistance in the form of external financing, Bahl decided to begin talks with the multinational energy giant Reliance Industries.[20]

In November 2011, the CEO, Haresh Chawla resigned despite having been one of the founders of the media conglomerate.[20] According to company insiders, he was persistently trying to convince Bahl to not enter into a debt agreement with Mukesh Ambani and instead raise funds by divesting part of the group's stake in the subsidiary Viacom18. In a later interview, he had commented that his resignation was an easy decision as he did not want anything to do with the Ambanis. According to a senior editor at the group, the decision to enter the talks was made reluctantly, as "[Bahl] was in a bind about entering a pact with the devil".[20] On 3 January 2012, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Network18 announced a partnership.[20][21] Reliance Industries set up a body called the Independent Media Trust (IMT) and infused funds into the company through a number of shell companies as part of a complex financial transaction. inr 54000000000 was transferred to Network18 and TV18 Broadcast, half the amount to each respectively, of which Network18 received a net amount of inr 40000000000 due to its stake in TV18.[22] The shell companies gained rights to debentures convertible to equity within 10 years. RIL also forced Network18 to buy its stakeholding in ETV Network for a sum of inr 21000000000 without which the net sum would have been for a much smaller amount. The purchase also included two regional broadcasters; Panorama and Prism. The acquisition included most of the television broadcasting properties of the Ramoji Group. The group retained the rights to ETV brand, while Network18 acquired 100% shareholding of 5 general news channels, 50% shareholding of 5 general entertainment channels and 24.5% shareholding in 2 other channels.[23] The entertainment channels were held by the joint venture of Viacom18.[24] One point of disagreement for Chawla had been in the valuation of ETV at inr 35000000000 when the company was worth only inr 5250000000 in March 2011.[25]

The transaction was completed in 2013,[11] and turned Network18 into the largest group of media companies in India, surpassing Star India owned by the billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and The Times Group owned by the Sahu Jain family. The broadband subsidiary of RIL, Infotel signed a memorandum of understanding with the group and gained preferential access to its content.[21] In the form of a passive investor, RIL had indirect control over the company, and authority over its financial decisions. The executives retained operational control of the company. On 12 November 2012, IMT passed a resolution which allowed two senior officials from RIL to be appointed as additional trustees and Bahl lost further control within the trust. IMT held the option of converting the debentures to equity which could turn RIL into the majority shareholder of Network18.

In 2013, Network18 had become debt free, and RIL's investment had led to assumptions that it would not initiate any further cost cutting measures.[20] Viacom18 after being a drain on the network's finances for years had finished its long germination period and had entered into a period of exponential growth.[10] However, on 16 August 2013, the company carried out an unexpected large scale wage reduction and staff lay-offs which came to be known as "Black Friday" among the employees. In the news branches, the lay-offs included around 300 producers, journalists and other staff, who were fired in no recognisable pattern in terms of salary, seniority or branch.[20] There was ambiguity over severance packages and compensations and the human resources department was accompanied by executives of the RIL backed IMT in abrupt handing out of termination letters to employees without prior notice, who were then told to leave within 10 minutes.[26] This further led to job insecurity among employees, many of whom began applying for and were hired by competing news broadcasters in the following period.[20]

In the months of November–December, the network's coverage of Arvind Kejriwal started to become a source of contention with RIL and Ambani. Kejriwal was the head of the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement and had made several allegations against various politicians and businessmen, including Mukesh Ambani. His allegations against Ambani and RIL was over irregularities in pricing of natural gas in the Krishna Godavari Basin which received national media attention and was reported on by Network18 as well.

RIL denied the allegation and reacted by threatening to file a lawsuit against Kejriwal but without any effect. Following which, the energy giant reportedly attempted to pressurise Network18 into censoring any and all coverage of IAC and Kejriwal including in March 2014, in a direct communication between Ambani and Rajdeep Sardesai, the managing editor of CNN IBN and IBN 7. In the previous years, one allegation that had come up against Ambani was that he had bailed out Ramoji Rao in the Margdarsai chit fund scandal and in the process gained stake in Rao's ETV Network, the same company which RIL had forced Network18 to buy a stake in.[21] According to an anonymous insider present at a meeting between the executives of Network18 and RIL, the right-hand man of Ambani, Manoj Modi had threatened Bahl by stating "You are calling us a dacoit, you are shouting that we are crony capitalists. If that is so, then why did you come to us for money in the first place? Do you think you have a clean record?"

Around the same time, the network increasingly began leaning right wing and attempted to publicise Narendra Modi as the prospective prime ministerial candidate with feature pieces and continuous reporting.[20][27] The network dedicated more hours than any other broadcaster to Modi and disproportionately more compared to other candidates.[20] The executives of Network18 were eager to repay the loan to RIL and get rid of Ambani's influence over the company. Reports have suggested that the network's coverage of Kejriwal became the trigger for the company to initiate a takeover.[25] RIL communicated its intention to Bahl, offering him the option of continuing as managing editor with a inr 200000000 annual salary and gave him 3 days to make his decision. He rejected the offer and on 27 May 2014, announced in midst of a routine meeting with his board of directors that he was going to resign as RIL wanted to takeover and nothing could be done about it.

The announcement caused an exodus of employees from the company which included senior journalists and executives. B. Sai Kumar (CEO) and Ajay Chacko (COO) resigned on 28 May 2014. From the following day, a stream of resignations started coming in while RIL released a press statement that it had gained complete control of the company, R. D. S. Bawa (CFO) and Ritu Kapur (co-promoter and one of the directors) resigned on the same day. The legal general counsel to the company, Kshipra Jatana resigned from her position but stayed on to oversee the transfer of ownership. She was appointed as the manager of the company for the interim period since Bahl had resigned as well.

Bahl and Kapur received inr 7069600000 for RIL to acquire their remaining shares. The net valuation of the company was at inr 42950000000, whereas the net cash flow for RIL stood at inr 13410000000 in the multi year transaction between 2011 and 2014 including those related to ETV. RIL had mitigated costs in this period through returns from the investments in the two companies and from selling the shares it had acquired in Network18's subsidiaries themselves. It was noted that due to the structure of the transaction, RIL had in effect partly financed its takeover by raising funds from the company's own subsidiaries such as TV18 Broadcast. The takeover process was completed on 7 July 2014; IMT and its sole benefactor RIL became the new promoters group.[28]

2014–Present: Reliance Industries era

Following the takeover, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) reshuffled the management and board of directors of both Network18 and its subsidiary TV18 Broadcast.[29] The nominees of the RIL backed Independent Media Trust (IMT) joined the board of Network18. Deepak Parekh, the chairman of Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) and Adil Zainulbhai were also inducted into the company as independent directors in the board.[30][31] While retaining the position of independent director at RIL and Larsen & Toubro, and being the newly elected Narendra Modi government's appointment to the position of chairman of Quality Council of India (QCI), Zainulbhai was appointed by RIL to the position of chairman of the board. Commentators raised concerns that the editorial integrity of the network may not be preserved under the new management. The channels of the network had stopped all coverage of Kejriwal and the new Aam Aadmi Party who had levied corruption accusations at RIL. The editor-in-chief of the flagship general news channel CNN IBN, resigned within a week of the takeover with the reason that the management was interfering in editorial decision making and dictating what could or could not be aired.[32]

A. P. Parigi, the former managing director and CEO of Entertainment Network India Limited (The Times Group subsidiary operating Radio Mirchi), was recruited by RIL and appointed as the new CEO of Network18 on 29 January 2015.[33] Parigi resigned as CEO and was moved to an advisory role in the company on 1 October.[34] Rahul Joshi replaced Parigi as the new CEO and was made the editor-in-chief of the group. Joshi was the editorial director of The Economic Times, a financial newspaper published by The Times Group before he had resigned from the company to join Network18 in August 2015.[35] The editorial departments were unified with the operational and commercial divisions of the company, the chairman Zainulbhai stated that Pairigi had helped stabilise the operations and that Joshi would now run the company with an "ownership mindset".[34]

The acquisition of the company by RIL, the largest conglomerate in India with deep interests in the energy sector, was considered to be a part of a trend of growing commodification of information, detrimental to the treatment of journalism as a public service. It increased the concentration of cross media ownership in the hands of a small group of large corporate actors in a market that was already oligopolistic and reduced the diversity of information disseminating outlets. Control over the news organisation, had strengthened RIL's ability to influence the formation of public opinion and as a result the political economy of the country, and also decreased space for reporting which could be detrimental to the energy giant's interests and public relations. Between 2014 and 2016, Network18 attempted to expand into regional markets of the news broadcasting sector with a spate of new channels, which was seen with apprehension among media observers. The expansion occurred as part of RIL's inr 1500000000000 investment in the rollout of its 4G data business.[36]

RIL had stated during the takeover that the acquisition would help in differentiating their 4G business through corporate synergy. Infotel, the broadband subsidiary of RIL had been reincorporated as Reliance Jio Infocomm and was in the process of launching its data transfer business.[37] It was suggested that the synergy would alleviate stresses posed by unstable market conditions in the news broadcast industry,[29] while Jio would provide exclusive content from Network18 productions to increase traffic towards itself and expand its customer base. The synergy was however not adopted, according to analysts it was not financially beneficial to restrict content to only Jio customers and that Jio itself could be more profitable by being a content aggregator at competitive rates and still have a cost advantage due to its scale.[38] In 2016, Network18 undertook a rebranding operation, the IBN brand was phased out and replaced with News18, channels such as CNN IBN renamed to CNN-News18,[39] and IBN7 renamed to News18 India,[40]

In May 2018, Cobrapost released a set of footages from a sting operation into several media organisations.[44] Network18 was one of the organisations featured,[44][45] and the sting displayed positive responses from senior marketing executives of the company to a proposition of entering into an agreement for undisclosed paid news to promote Hindutva political propaganda.[44] The executives included sales and marketing head of the group as well as the sales head of the ETV Network with the latter remarking that they were already pushing the ideology and would increase their efforts by 80–90% following the agreement.[46] The implications of the sting raised questions about media independence in India, and was described as a part of a phenomenon where the separation of editorial and marketing departments of news organisations are increasingly blurred due to advertisement business models.[45] Several of the media houses denied the allegation put forth by the sting,

On 9 July 2018, Joshi was elevated to the position of managing director while retaining the designations of CEO and group editor-in-chief. Kshipra Jatana who had officially held the designation of managing director since Bahl's resgination was removed from the position. In 2019, Network18 initiated heavy cost cutting measures, increments and new hires were frozen while budgets for employing freelancers were greatly reduced. Newsrooms were demoralised as uncertainty grew among employees and outlets such as Firstpost which relied heavily on freelancers were severely affected in their operations. Economic slowdown had reduced advertisement revenues and the regional channels of the company had not been successful in their respective markets.[38] The group had registered losses in the financial years of 2016–2017 and 2017–2018.[29][48]

On 21 November 2019, RIL entered into talks with the Japanese multinational media conglomerate Sony Group for consideration over a number of potential deal structures including merger options, schemes for acquisition of a stake in Network18 or the acquisition of the entertainment assets of the company, among others.[49][50] On 28 November, Bloomberg broke the news that Ambani was also in talks with The Times Group to potentially sell off the entire media conglomerate as it was suffering from losses.[51] In response to the report, RIL released a statement describing it as "false and malicious".[52] The Times Group denied it but with an addendum that "[they] will explore all strategic options as they present". In the following period, Network18's business news website Moneycontrol published an article which claimed that the newly founded joint venture, BloombergQuint was on the verge of collapse.[38] The article was published 5 days after Bloomberg's report and was described as a retaliatory piece.[53]

In February 2020, RIL announced that it would consolidate its distribution and media businesses. The subsidiary TV18 Broadcast would be merged with Network18, which would acquire the cable distribution companies DEN Networks and Hathway Cable & Datacom as two wholly owned subsidiaries,[54][55] RIL held the two companies through an earlier acquisition in October 2018.[56][57] The merger would have converted the Network18 into an integrated media and distribution company.[58] The shareholding of the RIL in Network18 was projected to be reduced to 64% from 75% upon conclusion of the transactions in the merger operations.[59][58]

In April 2020, the MD and CEO of Viacom18, Shudhanshu Vats resigned and Joshi took over his position as an additional charge.[63][64] The talks with Sony came to a finalised decision for a merger between Viacom18 and Sony Pictures Networks India in July. The merger was scheduled to be completed by the end of August,[65] Sony would obtain 74% stake leaving Viacom18 with 26% stake in the merged entity; Network18 and ViacomCBS would have around 13% in it respectively.[66] The plans for the merger was abandoned in October. The implementation of the consolidation with the distribution companies was itself delayed and eventually cancelled in April 2021.[67]

In October 2020, TV18 Broadcast reported an 148.2% increase in profit margins during the COVID-19 pandemic in India an nhd the company attributed it to "proactive measures on cost-control".[68] In a Right to Information (RTI) request response in June 2021, data released by the Uttar Pradesh government showed that the government's spending on television advertisements was at inr 1603100000 between April 2020 and May 2021 with Network18 as its biggest beneficiary. Promotion of the Atmanirbhar Bharat campaign constituted a major portion of the spending and was made in the initial part of the year. Umashankar Dube, a journalist who had filed the RTI request had raised questions seeking answers to why the spending was made on television advertisements and not on relief efforts in midst of the pandemic but the Uttar Pradesh government's additional chief secretary of information refused to respond to queries on advertisement spending.[69]