Raghav Bahl | |
---|---|
Alma mater | St. Stephen's College FMS, Delhi |
Occupation | Businessman |
Known for | Founder & former MD, Network18 Group Founder, Quintillion Media |
Spouse | Ritu Kapur |
Children | Tara Bahl, Vidur Bahl |
Raghav Bahl is an Indian businessman, a serial entrepreneur, and an investor best known for his past ownership of several television channels, including TV18 India. He was the Founding/Controlling shareholder & managing director of Network18 Group, a media group that he started in 1993 and grew into one of the largest collection of media properties in India. [1]
At its peak, the group controlled by Raghav Bahl included media and internet-based media outlets such as in.com, IBNLive.com, Moneycontrol.com, Firstpost.com, Cricketnext, Homeshop18, bookmyshow.com, Forbes India, TV channels such as Colors and some in partnership with international media groups such as NBC TV18, CNN-IBN, IBN7, MTV, and CNBC Awaaz. [1] [2]
By late 2011, according to a LiveMint article, Bahl's media group had a large debt, was running in loss and banks were unwilling to lend the group additional capital. [1] Bahl's group sought capital from the Reliance Industries Ltd in 2012, and two years later Reliance took over the media empire and Bahl left the Network18 group on 29 May 2014. [1] [2] [3]
After departing from the Network18 group, Bahl co-founded Quintillion Media Pvt Ltd with his wife Ritu Kapur. Currently, Bahl is the promoter of Quint Digital Media Limited [4] and his media group controls Thequint.com. [5] [6] Bahl entered a joint venture agreement with Bloomberg L.P. to launch BloombergQuint in 2016, [7] the equity partnership ended in 2022. [8]
He received his schooling from St. Xavier's School, Delhi. He graduated in Economics Honors from St. Stephens College, and then did a Masters in Business Administration from the Faculty of Management Studies. [9]
His sister, Vandana Malik, also served in various positions under the Network18 Group. Her daughter and Bahl's niece, Avantika Malik, was married to Bollywood actor Imran Khan. [10]
He began his career as a management consultant with A.F. Ferguson & Co, followed by a stint with American Express Bank, and later moved on to media. Raghav has over 22 years experience in television and journalism. [11]
He started his career in media in 1985 as a Correspondent and Anchorperson for Doordarshan. He was the Anchorperson and Production Consultant for India's first monthly video news magazine, Newstrack, produced by the India Today group. From 1991 to 1993, he was the Executive Director of Business India Television and produced the Business India Show and Business A.M. on Doordarshan.[ citation needed ]
In 1999, he launched CNBC-TV18. He was responsible for directing most of the work of TV18 and channels like CNBC-Awaaz, Nickelodeon and Colors. Raghav served as the managing director of TV18 Group till July 2014.
By attracting media talent such as Rajdeep Sardesai and Sameer Manchanda, Bahl built an audience for his media properties.
By late 2011, Bahl's media group had amassed a large debt, was running in loss and banks were unwilling to lend the group additional capital. [1] Bahl's group sought capital from the Reliance Industries Ltd in 2012. [1] Bahl then brought the losses in his group under control, laid off hundreds of employees in his media group, closed or trimmed many of the properties within the group, according to the LiveMint. [1] [12]
Two years later, in 2014, under the terms of this financing agreement, Reliance took over the Network18 group. With the change in ownership, Bahl left the Network18 Group in 2014. [1]
After leaving the Network18 Group, he founded Quintillion Media, a digital startup that publishes The Quint , along with his wife Ritu Kapur on 8 July 2014.
He has authored three books:
Rajdeep Sardesai is an Indian news anchor, reporter, journalist and author. He is a consulting editor and an anchor of India Today Television. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Global Broadcast News, that included CNN-IBN, IBN7 and IBN-Lokmat, before resigning in July 2014.
New Delhi Television Ltd is an Indian news media company focusing on broadcast and digital news publication. The company is considered to be a legacy brand that pioneered independent news broadcasting in India, and is credited for launching the first 24x7 news channel and the first lifestyle channel in the country. It owns and operates the broadcast news channels of NDTV India and NDTV 24x7. The two channels of the company have received 32 Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards.
Sanjay Pugalia is a veteran Indian political and business journalist with print and broadcast experience who is the former editor-in-chief of CNBC Awaaz in Mumbai, India. He was hired as a senior news director by several start-up Hindi-language news channels at their launching, including Star News and CNBC Awaaz. He is the Editorial Director of The Quint as of 2021.
Cable News Network-News18 is an Indian English-language news television channel founded by Raghav Bahl based in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. It is currently co-owned by Network18 Group and Warner Bros. Discovery. CNN provides international coverage for the channel, while Indian Broadcasting Network concentrates on Indian and local reports.
Kapoor/Kapur is a Khatri clan found in the Punjabi Hindu and Sikh communities.
TV18 Broadcast Limited is an Indian entity belonging to Network18 Group based in Mumbai. TV18 owns and operates various national channels in separate partnerships with NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN-News18) and Paramount Global.
Network18 Media & Investments Limited, commonly referred to as the Network18 Group and sometimes as the Network18–Eenadu Group, is an Indian media conglomerate owned by the energy giant Reliance Industries, headed by billionaire Mukesh Ambani. Rahul Joshi is the managing director, chief executive officer and group editor-in-chief of Network18, and Adil Zainulbhai is the chairman of its board of directors.
Viacom18 Media Private Limited is an Indian media company based in Mumbai, India; it is a joint venture between Network18 Group—a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, and Paramount Global. It was founded in 2007 and owns various channels, as well as content production studios in India.
Lalit Jalan is the Advisor & former Chief Executive Officer of Reliance Infrastructure, part of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), one of India's largest corporate houses. He is the Chairman of BSES Rajdhani Power Limited and BSES Yamuna Power Limited and serves as Director in several companies including Reliance Defence Ltd, which is associated with the Rafale deal between India and France.
DEN Networks Limited is a cable television distribution company in India. It is owned by Sameer Manchanda and was acquired by Reliance Industries in 2018 along with Hathway. In 2003, it stood as one of the three major cable distributors in India alongside Hathway and InCablenet.
Colors Gujarati is an Indian television channel that primarily broadcasts Gujarati entertainment shows.
Firstpost is an Indian news website owned by Reliance Industries, which also runs CNN-News18 and CNBC-TV18..
NSEL case relates to a payment default at the National Spot Exchange Limited that occurred in 2013 involving Financial Technologies India Ltd, when a payment default took place after a commodities market regulator, the Forward Markets Commission (FMC), directed NSEL to stop launching contracts. This led to the closure of the Exchange in July 2013.
Umesh Upadhyay is a veteran Indian television journalist and media executive. He is currently President & Director of Media at Reliance Industries Limited., prior to which he was President of News at Network 18.
Moneycontrol.com is a business news portal and digital property published by E-Eighteen.Com Limited (EECL), which, in turn, is a subsidiary of the Reliance Industries-owned Network 18 group.
Karti Chidambaram is an Indian politician and businessman. A member of the Indian National Congress, he serves as the Member of Parliament for Sivaganga in the Lok Sabha. He was elected in the 2019 Indian general election, winning the seat held seven times by his father, P. Chidambaram.
BQ Prime, formerly BloombergQuint, is an Indian business and financial news organization founded as a joint venture of Bloomberg News and Quintillion Media. Its main content is based on the Indian economy, international finance, corporate law and governance and business news. Within six months of going live, the web portal had one million monthly users, and there were plans to open a free-to-air TV channel. In July 2017, digital video analytics provider Vidooly rated BloombergQuint as the ninth most popular news brand among what it termed new-age news publishers. In September 2017, BloombergQuint launched a digital live streaming service available on its website (www.bloombergquint.com), the Bloomberg Terminal and BloombergQuint social platforms. The service includes daily live programming from both global and local markets. It launched a WhatsApp service in November 2017. It also announced a partnership with Nasscom, T-Hub and the government of Karnataka to launch 'ScaleUP', an initiative designed to help emerging companies and start-ups scale for growth in November 2017.
The Quint is an English and Hindi language Indian general news and opinion website founded by Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur after their exit from Network18. The publication's journalists have won three Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards and two Red Ink Awards.
The NSE co-location scam relates to the market manipulation at the National Stock Exchange of India, India's leading stock exchange. Allegedly select players obtained market price information ahead of the rest of the market, enabling them to front run the rest of the market, possibly breaching the NSE's purpose of demutualisation exchange governance and its robust transparency-based mechanism. The alleged connivance of insiders by rigging NSE's algo-trading and use of co-located servers ensured substantial profits to a set of brokers. This widespread market fraud came to light when markets' regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), received the first anonymous complaint through a whistle-blower's letter in January 2015. The whistle-blower alleged that trading members were able to capitalise on advance knowledge by colluding with some exchange officials. The overall default amount through NSE's high-frequency trading (HFT) is estimated to be ₹500 billion over five years.
Ritu Kapur is an Indian media entrepreneur. She is the CEO of Quintillion Media, which jointly owns BloombergQuint with Bloomberg L.P. She is the co-founder of The Quint, a web-based digital news site and was one of the founding members of Network18 in 1992.