Rs 440 crore and counting: Firms linked to Mukesh Ambani own over 43% of News Nation

Since 2012, companies linked to billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance have invested about Rs 440 crore in the TV network that runs News Nation , documents filed with the Registrar of Companies show.

The investments in News Nation Network Private Limited were made through the purchase of equity and preference shares as well as loans.

News Nation began selling shares to companies linked to the Reliance group in 2012. The latest investment, billed at Rs 15 crore, was made in June this year.

News Nation Network Pvt Ltd owns three free-to-air Hindi TV news channels – News Nation, News State Uttar Pradesh/Uttarakhand and News State Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh . It also runs the website newsnationtv.com .

The network has come under scrutiny for hateful commentary , false news and, of course, for that infamous Deepak Chaurasia episode last year.

The web of companies that injected the funds into News Nation are linked to Ambani through firms controlled by his associates, businessmen Mahendra Nahata and Surendra Lunia.

. Nahata controls the HFCL telecom group and is a director in Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, which operates as the telecom giant Jio, along with Ambani. Lunia heads the IT services group Infotel and was on the Jio board between 2007 and 2010. He was also the CEO of HFCL Infotel between 2000 and 2010.

Until August, Lunia controlled Vishwapradhan Commercial Private Limited, or VCPL, a company that was instrumental in the Adani group’s ongoing takeover of NDTV .

Around 292 crore out of the Rs 440 crore came to News Nation as stock investments from companies linked to the Reliance group. Another Rs 148 crore was borrowed by the network from a company with direct link to the Reliance group. The loan gave the corporate behemoth the option to take control of the network through equity shares. In 2015, the ownership of the loan was transferred to another company controlled by Lunia, where it still resides.

Starting as a minority shareholder

News Nation Network Pvt Ltd was registered in Bengal in June 2010 as Alpha Dealcom Pvt Ltd. One of its earliest shareholders was Shinano Retail Pvt Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance, which held 1.3 crore of its total 7.5 crore shares.

The largest shareholders in the network were two companies of the Oswal group, a textile conglomerate, which owned 3.5 crore shares in total. Another 2 crore shares were owned by one Yuthika Trading Company Pvt Ltd.

The smallest shareholder in the company was AT Invofin India Pvt Ltd with merely 4 lakh shares. The company is controlled by Alok Tandon, the promoter of Shyam Telecom, who had invested in NDTV in 2013.

In 2011-12, Alpha obtained government permission to run three news channels and was rechristened as News Nation Network Pvt Ltd.

According to its balance sheet, in the following financial year, Shinano Retail loaned Rs 50 crore to the network at 9 percent interest. This came three years after the Reliance group loaned Rs 403 crore to NDTV and coincided with the conglomerate’s massive infusion of more than Rs 3,000 crore in News18 .

This loan, like almost all Reliance’s media investments, was extended as convertible debentures. This meant that the group could use it to buy additional stake in News Nation – Rs 50 crore meant 5 crore shares, nearly 66 percent of the network then.

Leaving a money trail

In 2022, the Reliance group’s imprint is all over News Nation . Unlike a decade ago, the conglomerate does not involve itself in the network through a subsidiary. Instead, it is Ambani’s business associates Nahata and Lunia who employ their companies for investments.

By 2015, the Rs 50 crore loan from Shinano Retail had burgeoned to Rs 133 crore. In September that year, the subsidiary transferred the entire loan to Infotel Televentures – now known as Nextwave Televentures – a firm controlled by Lunia through Trendy Ventures Pvt Ltd, which owns 99.9 percent of it.

As of 2019, the directors of Nextwave Televentures, Tarun Kalra and Baburaj Eradath, are associate vice presidents in Nahata’s HFCL.

Where did Nextwave Televentures get the Rs 133 crore to buy Shinano’s debentures? The trail leads to Reliance. In the month preceding the loan transfer, between August 13 and September 29, 2015, a company called MN Ventures Pvt Ltd loaned Rs 138 crore to Nextwave Televentures over six tranches. Nahata is a director in MN Ventures.

In the same period, MN Ventures received Rs 190 crore as loan from Infotel Business Solutions Private Limited, where Lunia has been a director since 2002. Infotel, in turn, was loaned Rs 169 crore from another Lunia company – Digivision Media Private Limited, which was amalgamated into MN Ventures in 2017.

Four years later, a fellow subsidiary of Infotel Business Solutions, MN Media Ventures Pvt Ltd, began receiving loans from a company called Teesta Retail Pvt Ltd. In five tranches between August 2019 and April 2021, stock filings show, Teesta Retail transferred Rs 150 crore to the company.

Teesta Retail has direct links to the Reliance group. According to 2021 stock filings, the conglomerate has parked Rs 495 crore in Teesta Retail – Rs 465 crore from Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings Limited, or RIIHL, through an investment in preference shares in March 2017; and Rs 30 crore through a loan from Reliance Services and Holdings Limited in January 2019.

RIIHL is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, or RIL. Reliance Services and Holdings Limited is controlled by the Petroleum Trust, whose sole beneficiary is RIIHL.

As of March 2021, Nextwave Televentures’s loan to News Nation stands at Rs 133.5 crore, amounting to more than 10 percent of the network in equity.

In June 2022, a stock filing by the network declared that it had borrowed another Rs 15 crore from Nextwave Televentures in convertible debentures. This takes the loan to Rs 148.5 crore, equivalent to 12 percent of the network.

In December 2015, Shinano Retail also sold its 1.3 crore equity shares in News Nation to Nextwave Televentures.

By March 2016, companies associated with Nahata and Lunia began buying the network’s shares en masse, infusing it with Rs 120 crore in capital. Digivision Media Pvt Ltd, where Lunia was then a director, invested Rs 65 crore in the network – Rs 100 each for 65 lakh shares. Nextwave Televentures bought shares worth Rs 20 crore and Infotel Technologies, also controlled by Lunia, invested Rs 35 crore in the network.

The three companies picked up preference shares, a financial instrument which allows investors to draw a fixed sum from a company and receive dividends on profits before common shareholders. If a company goes bankrupt, preference shareholders are also paid before common shareholders.

The profits, however, did not materialise. Between 2014 and 2021, News Nation did not report profits in any balance sheet. In fact, the entrance of Ambani’s associates in 2015 came after the network reported its biggest annual loss of Rs 56 crore. In 2016, it reported a loss of Rs 46 crore.

. In 2016, the Oswals exited entirely from News Nation along with Yuthika Trading Company. They sold their 8 crore News Nation shares to AT Invofin, which turned from the network’s smallest shareholder to the largest one, with 66.6 percent of the network in its kitty.

Curiously, the Oswals had bought 2.5 crore News Nation shares for Rs 10 each only three weeks before this sale. AT Invofin’s balance sheet for the year 2016-17, however, shows that it bought the Oswal and Yuthika Trading Company shares for approximately Rs 8 crore – a dirt cheap Rs 1 for every share.

In March 2017, a company called Sudh Investments Pvt Ltd in turn bought 1.9 crore shares from AT invofin for Rs 19 crore, acquiring 20 percent of News Nation .

Total control

As of 2021, News Nation ’s equity ownership has not changed. What has changed is the scale of investments by Ambani-linked companies in preference shares, up from Rs 120 crore via three companies in 2016 to Rs 260 crore through five companies as of March 2021.

Infotel Technologies has raised its profile in the company from Rs 35 crore to Rs 60 crore. Nextwave Televentures has leapt from Rs 20 crore to Rs 85 crore.

The two new entrants were Teesta Retail Pvt Ltd and MN Media Ventures Pvt Ltd. Between 2018 and 2020, they poured Rs 50 crore into the network.

Stock filings show that in addition to the Rs 150 crore loan that Teesta Retail extended to MN Media Ventures, it also poured nearly Rs 100 crore in the latter in 2021-2022 alone. Sudh Investments, which owns one-fifth of News Nation’s equity, is also linked to Reliance: it borrowed Rs 40 crore from Teesta Retail and Rs 10 crore from Lunia’s Infotel Technologies.

Taken together, this means that Ambani-linked companies own 33.41 percent equity shares and 100 percent preference shares in News Nation . With the Rs 148.5 crore loan, this totals to a whopping investment of Rs 440 crore.

. Newslaundry reached out to News Nation and a spokesperson of the Reliance group for comments. This report will be updated if we receive a response.

Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously calculated the total shareholding of companies linked to Ambani at 43.41 percent. The error is regretted.

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Rs 440 crore and counting: Firms linked to Mukesh Ambani own over 33% of News Nation

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Rs 440 crore and counting: Firms linked to Mukesh Ambani own over 33% of News Nation

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