1996–2007: Acquisition and restructuring SGA Finance and Management Services was incorporated on 16 February 1996, as a
private limited company by Geeta and Rakesh Gupta and acquired soon afterwards by Vidya Devi and Anil Jindal. The company had remained inactive without any clear prospects until it was later acquired by the promoters of Television Eighteen India Limited. The news broadcasting company Television Eighteen (TEIL) founded by
Ritu Kapur and
Raghav Bahl, became a
public limited company in 1999 and its
initial public offering (IPO) received an overwhelming response. The investments through the IPO exceeded the target set by the company by a magnitude of over 50 times by the end of the year, raising in the process. and the news channel to be launched was called
CNBC Awaaz. The guidelines required the Indian promoters to have more than 51% stake in their company to be able to establish a new
uplink for broadcasting. In the financial year 2005–2006, TEIL supplemented its initial investment with an additional in SGA News for
common stocks. Following this, the boards of both the companies proposed a restructuring which received approval from the shareholders. The companies underwent several rounds of restructuring which came to a conclusion in November 2006. TEIL became a subsidiary of SGA Finance, the promoters gained a majority stake in TEIL, CNBC Awaaz was transferred to TEIL and shareholders of TEIL were accommodated with a stake in SGA Finance. Haresh Chawla, the CEO of TEIL and Network18 was instrumental in both convincing Sardesai to quit and Bahl to take on NDTV as their competition.
2007–2011: Expansion, consolidation and increasing debt Global Broadcast News (GBN), the subsidiary operating CNN IBN became a publicly traded company in January 2007 and its IPO generated a successful response, similar to that of Television Eighteen India Limited (TEIL). and on 1 December 2007, Network18 Fincap itself was renamed to Network18 Media & Investments. It had high liquidity and expanded rapidly, it started the film production house called Indian Film Company (IFC), while IBN18 Broadcast entered into a joint venture with the
Marathi language newspaper
Lokmat to launch the Marathi news channel
IBN Lokmat, and began a joint venture with
ViacomCBS to initiate the group's foray in mass media and general entertainment channels under
Viacom18. Network18 registered losses in the financial years 2008–2009 and 2009–2010. Its investments had outstripped the profits generated by its operational assets. In addition, the group had existing debt obligations and requirements for providing
returns to its investors which resulted in net losses of and respectively. Viacom18 in particular was a drain on the company's funds. The financial statement of the company in 2009 had reported that it was retiring outstanding debt and raising funds through equity investments. In response to the financial challenges, the group began restructuring and consolidating its assets in the same year. IBN18 Broadcast was renamed to
TV18 Broadcast and Television Eighteen India Limited (TEIL) which operated the business news channels of the company was merged into it. In the financial year 2010–2011, Network18 registered a loss of , which was a considerable decrease from the previous two years and Bahl reportedly told the shareholders during the presentation of the annual report that "the best times are still ahead of us". The company had also entered into a distribution joint venture with the
Sun Network called Sun18. It had 2 divisions named Sun18 North and Sun18 South, the former was managed by Network18 and the latter by the Sun Network. The joint venture was later restricted to
Tamil Nadu and replaced by the TV18–Viacom18 distribution joint venture IndiaCast in 2012. The consolidation of assets was completed by 2011 but it alone could not mitigate the financial challenges. and advertising revenue had decreased due to economic downturn. 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. The shell companies gained rights to
debentures convertible to equity within 10 years. The entertainment channels were held by the joint venture of Viacom18. One point of disagreement for Chawla had been in the valuation of ETV at when the company was worth only in March 2011. The transaction was completed in 2013, 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. The network dedicated more hours than any other broadcaster to Modi and disproportionately more compared to other candidates.
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. The nominees of the RIL backed Independent Media Trust (IMT) joined the board of Network18. 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), 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. Parigi resigned as CEO and was moved to an advisory role in the company on 1 October. Rahul Joshi replaced Parigi as the new CEO and was made the
editor-in-chief of the group. 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". RIL had stated during the takeover that the acquisition would help in differentiating their 4G business through
corporate synergy. It was suggested that the synergy would alleviate stresses posed by unstable market conditions in the news broadcast industry, 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, and IBN7 renamed to
News18 India, among others. Earlier in December 2015,
CNN Worldwide had finalised its decision to renew the franchise licensing agreement with Network18, after a period of uncertainty. In May 2018,
Cobrapost released a set of footages from a sting operation into several media organisations. Network18 was one of the organisations featured, 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. The implications of the sting raised questions about
media independence in India, Network18 did not respond to it. 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. 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. In response to the report, RIL released a statement describing it as "false and malicious". 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. 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, RIL held the two companies through an earlier acquisition in October 2018. The merger would have converted the Network18 into an integrated media and distribution company. 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. while others stated that it decreased the likelihood of an agreement with Sony due to its key interest, the entertainment assets of Network18 becoming closely associated with the news operations, where there were restrictions over foreign ownership. In April 2020, the MD and CEO of Viacom18, Shudhanshu Vats resigned and Joshi took over his position as an additional charge. 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, Sony would obtain 74% stake leaving Viacom18 with 26% stake in the merged entity; Network18 and ViacomCBS would have around 13% in it respectively. 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. 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". 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 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. ==Owned Assets==