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BBC announces new entity launched by Indian staff to comply with FDI rules
People familiar with the matter said that all BBC employees who are working on content published in India would be transferred to the new company that is wholly owned by Indians
The BBC on Tuesday said that four of its employees in India have left the organisation to set up an Indian company wholly owned by Indians to produce content for the platform in compliance with the country’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) law.
The new company, the Collective Newsroom Private Limited, will produce content for the BBC in Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi. All content for Indian digital platforms and the Indian YouTube channel in English will be created by the CNPL.
In September 2019, the government had decreased permitted FDI in digital news publications from 100% to 26%. In November 2020, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, through a public notice, gave all digital news publishers a month to furnish details of their shareholding patterns. The entities that had FDI greater than 26% had time until October 15, 2021 to reduce such investment and seek approval of the MIB. It is not known how many companies disclosed their shareholding patterns to the MIB in accordance with the November 2020 public notice.
In December 2022, Reuters had reduced its minority stake in Asian News International (ANI)) to comply with the FDI regulation.
Issues around FDI in BBC’s Indian arm were brought up by the MIB earlier this year. It is understood that at least one meeting between the BBC and the MIB secretary occurred over the FDI issue, and the MIB sent at least one letter to the BBC over this. It is not clear how many digital news publishers or similar entities have been hauled by the MIB for potentially not complying with the FDI rules.
Earlier this year, a controversy erupted around a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Gujarat riots of 2002. The documentary was blocked in India through the emergency blocking provision of the controversial Information Technology Rules, 2021. Separately, the BBC also issued copyright takedown notices to multiple social media platforms and Internet Archive to remove the documentary. To be sure, the documentary was not produced by BBC India, and was never screened or streamed in India by the BBC; it was produced and released only in the UK. In February, the Income Tax Department raided BBC’s Delhi office.
The four employees who have left the BBC to start CNPL are senior news editor Rupa Jha, editorial head – BBC’s African languages- Mukesh Sharma, deputy managing editor Sanjoy Majumder and general manager Sara Hassan.
These four employees, along with five other members of the BBC are the shareholders in the new entity. These include BBC’s Telugu editor Sriram Gopisetty, BBC Tamil editor Thangavel Appachi, senior new editor Shashank Chouhan, news operations manager Atul Garg, and human resources specialist Kiran Chahal.
All employees who are working on content published in India --- the six Indian language services and digital English content in India --- would be transferred to the CNPL, HT has learnt.
“The BBC’s presence in India is steeped in a rich history that has always put audiences first, so we warmly welcome the formation of Collective Newsroom which continues that progression. The BBC will get first class content from Collective Newsroom that will be rooted in India and in line with the editorial standards audiences expect from the BBC. We look forward to working with them,” Jonathan Munro, the deputy CEO of BBC News, said in a statement.
