BBC restructures India business after tweaks in FDI rules for news digital media sector

BBC has transferred its newsroom publishing licence in India to a personal restricted firm, Collective Newsroom, marking a primary within the public service broadcaster’s international operations. This transition comes a 12 months after the Revenue Tax division performed searches at BBC’s places of work.

Collective Newsroom, a completely Indian-based firm established by 4 ex-BBC staff, will provoke operations from April 10. It would generate content material for BBC’s digital companies in seven languages together with English, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu.

In accordance with the Ministry of Company Affairs, Collective Newsroom Personal Restricted was integrated on October 27, 2020. Rupa Jha, the CEO of Collective Newsroom, informed The Indian Specific that whereas BBC is their first consumer, they don’t seem to be solely signed up with them.

She assured that the content material produced will adhere to BBC’s Editorial Tips and uphold the belief within the BBC model. “It is unprecedented for the BBC to grant their license to publish to a different entity… We is not going to compromise our journalism and the BBC is solidly behind us,” she mentioned. 

The restructuring was a response to the brand new Overseas Direct Funding guidelines launched in 2020, imposing a 26 per cent FDI restrict in India’s digital media sector.

BBC, having sought a 26 per cent stake in Collective Newsroom, needed to cut back its international funding to adjust to this regulation by October 2021. Rupa Jha emphasised that this resolution was chosen to keep up BBC’s presence in India with out reducing jobs or changing into financially unviable.

“There have been quite a few choices earlier than us. Contemplating that the BBC did not wish to lose its presence in India or reduce jobs, and so they did not wish to change into financially unviable, this compelled us to assume out of the field. Primarily based on the authorized recommendation the BBC was receiving, everybody was veering in the direction of this because the viable possibility (of organising the Collective),” Jha defined. 

Guidelines on FDI in digital media entities

The Commerce Ministry in September 2019 determined to “liberalise the FDI regime for entities engaged within the Information Digital Media Sector”. On account of this, such entities which are engaged in information digital media sector have been allowed a international direct funding of upto 26 per cent by way of authorities approval route. 

As per the Commerce Ministry, the digital information media retailers searching for FDI approval want to fulfill some situations. These situations are: 

• Majority of administrators on the corporate’s board and the CEO of the corporate need to be of Indian origin
• Entity required to get safety clearance for international personnel prone to be deployed for greater than 60 days in a 12 months by means of appointment, contract or consultancy or in some other capability for functioning earlier than their deployment
• If their safety clearance will get rejected or withdrawn, the entity shall make sure the involved individual tenders their resignation or their companies are terminated quickly after receiving such directives from the federal government

I-T raids at BBC’s India premises

In February 2023, BBC’s places of work in Delhi and Mumbai had been searched by the revenue tax division days after it aired a documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged function in the identical.