A thumbnail assignment, Rs 3.87 cr, and no work order: The questions around Prasar Bharati’s Waves

In November 2024, India’s public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati, launched its OTT platform, Waves. To prepare thumbnails and metadata for the platform’s content, Prasar Bharati arrived at a figure of Rs 3.87 crore, payable to five multimedia agencies empanelled with the Central Bureau of Communication (CBC), picked out of a list of 21. Of this, close to 74 percent was earmarked for a single company: Ankur Media Private Limited.

Thumbnails and metadata are what the broadcaster calls “child assets” – supporting materials, including posters and infographics, that help viewers navigate content on an OTT platform. Metadata itself is the information tagged to a title: its description, genre, language, duration, cast, keywords and release date.

An approval issued by the Prasar Bharati managing committee on October 3, 2024, was clear that the work of preparing these child assets would go to a multimedia agency empanelled with the CBC. But copies of documents seen by Newslaundry show the work was actually done by VidUnit, not Ankur Media.

VidUnit was not among the five CBC-empanelled agencies selected for the task. It is not even empanelled with the CBC as a multimedia agency – it is restricted to the audio-visual category. No formal work order was ever issued for any of this – not before the work began, not after the platform launched, not even now.

Was it because of an exemption?

VidUnit’s name seems to have first appeared in this process nearly eight months after the task had been assigned. On June 8, 2025, Uma Iyer Rawla, a contractual expert (media operations and creatives) at Prasar Bharati, wrote to other executives, listing the details agency-wise and wrote “VidUnit” in parentheses just below “Ankur Media”. 

While VidUnit is a Mumbai-based influencer marketing and digital content agency, Ankur Media is a Gurugram-based advertising and media agency. 

More than seven months later, on March 21, 2026, Rawla CC’d VidUnit in her email to the five agencies selected for the task, seeking details of the work done. 

It was VidUnit, and not Ankur Media, that responded to Rawla’s email. On March 23, Sourabh Kumar, the head of VidUnit, replied: “We acknowledge the update and confirm that we will keep the complete set of child assets – including metadata, thumbnails, posters, infographics, and all relevant supporting records – ready in a properly compiled and structured format for the verification process.”

When Newslaundry contacted Kumar, he confirmed that his agency had worked on metadata and thumbnails for Prasar Bharati. But when he was told that his agency was never awarded the work, he said he would speak to us later. Our subsequent calls to him remained unanswered. Ankur Malhotra, who heads Ankur Media, also declined to comment. 

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior official from Prasar Bharati’s web operations alleged it was a case of sub-contracting and was “against the rules”. 

However, an exemption granted due to a time crunch could also have been the reason. 

Normally, production companies that create content for OTT platforms provide the metadata and thumbnails. However, since they could not supply these assets in the required format and within the time frame Waves needed, Prasar Bharati officials sought a relaxation of the rules. As per the minutes of the Prasar Bharati Management Committee meeting held on October 3, 2024, Amit Kumar, the then Director (Content Sourcing) at Doordarshan, proposed an exemption under Clauses 3.11 and 6.9 of the organisation's CSP-2024 (Content Sourcing Policy) relating to the submission of ‘child assets’. 

The management committee accepted this proposal. Once the state broadcaster secured this exemption, it proceeded to estimate and approve the cost of the work.

Over the following year, however, this figure would shift for different reasons.

A ‘typographical error’

On January 19, 2025, Uma Iyer Rawla moved a file seeking ex-post-facto approval. With Waves’ launch in view, she wrote, child assets had already been created by CBC-empanelled multimedia agencies. Her estimate for roughly 5,000 titles: Rs 2.30 crore, excluding GST. In administrative and legal contexts, ex post facto describes situations where approval is obtained retrospectively.

Three days later, the then Deputy Director General (Content Sourcing), Amit Kumar, wrote this note: “Resubmit this as per the discussion.” What that discussion actually covered, Newslaundry could not establish. 

Five months later, on June 8, 2025, Rawla returned with a revised estimate: the cost had risen to around Rs 4.63 crore (excluding GST). Her agency-wise breakdown showed Ankur Media alone had been assigned work worth Rs 2.3 crore for 20,000 thumbnails and Rs 1.39 crore for 7,736 graphics, while the remaining four agencies together accounted for roughly Rs 1 crore. On the following day, Amit Kumar asked the operations team to re-verify how much work the agencies had actually done.

Seven months later, on February 24, 2026, Rawla laid out the completed work and revised the cost at Rs 3.87 crore, but sought financial approval for Rs 4.63 crore. Aditya Chaturvedi, Advisor (OTT Head) at PB Central Archives, recommended this proposal for financial approval.

On March 5, Pratishtha Singh, Executive (Finance and Accounts) (OTT) at PB Central Archives, raised pointed questions. Upon re-examination of the figures, she flagged that the cost had turned out to be Rs 3.87 crore, not Rs 4.63 crore. This Rs 75.11 lakh gap between the two estimates resulted from a change in the scope of work assigned to Ankur Media, she noted. Singh also asked officials to confirm whether the Prasar Bharati Management Committee had approved the work, whether work orders and engagement documents existed, and whether the CBC rate card applied here.

On March 11, 2026, Rawla resubmitted the file with a fuller explanation, putting the discrepancy down to a “typographical error.”

A Prasar Bharati committee then examined the quantity and quality of the assets the agencies had actually produced. The committee’s members were Monika Gulati (Programme Executive, PB Central Archives), Uma Rawla and Pranjal Mishra (Content Manager, Waves OTT). Rawla was appointed as convener of this committee. 

A committee meeting was set for April 21, tasked with producing a report. Only after that could the file move to the Integrated Finance Division for financial concurrence, then to ex-post-facto approval, and finally to payment. According to information obtained by Newslaundry, that committee meeting has since taken place but no payment has been made so far.

A senior Prasar Bharati official associated with the matter said, on condition of anonymity, that since the work had already been completed, the figures for cost and scope should not have been stated in approximate terms while seeking ex post facto approval. 

Newslaundry emailed questions to Prasar Bharati CEO Gaurav Dwivedi and Waves head Aditya Chaturvedi seeking to understand why approvals weren’t secured before the work was handed out, how the expenditure discrepancy arose, on what basis VidUnit was operating, and why a work order still doesn't exist. Neither responded at the time of publication.

Rawla told Newslaundry that she works on a contractual basis and that she simply follows the instructions of senior officials, and has no role in decision-making.

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