Less Than Year After Facing IT Scrutiny, BBC India Transferred To Private Company Collective Newsroom, Here's All That Happened

The BBC has taken a significant step by transferring its newsroom in India to a private limited company, less than a year after facing scrutiny from Income Tax authorities for alleged violations as per a report by The Indian Express.

This move marks a first for the public service broadcaster's global operations.

Starting next week, a private limited company named the "Collective Newsroom," established by four former BBC employees, will take over the responsibility of producing all Indian content for the BBC's digital services in seven languages, including Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu.

The BBC has reportedly sought a 26 per cent stake in this private limited company, as per information received from Rupa Jha, Chief Executive Officer of the Collective Newsroom. Jha, formerly the senior news editor at BBC India, is one of the four founding shareholders of Collective Newsroom.

This restructuring of the BBC's India operations was necessitated by the new Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) rules introduced in 2020, which imposed a 26 per cent FDI limit in India's digital media sector. Previously, BBC India was more than 99 per cent owned by the UK-based broadcaster itself.

However, with the introduction of the investment cap, companies exceeding the 26 per cent FDI limit were required to reduce their foreign investment to comply with the regulation by October 2021.

The new FDI rules created uncertainty around the BBC's operations in India. Rupa Jha stated, "There were a number of options before us. Considering that the BBC didn’t want to lose its presence in India or cut jobs, and they didn’t want it to become financially unviable, this forced us to think out of the box. Based on the legal advice the BBC was receiving, everyone was veering towards this as the viable option (of setting up the collective)."