Dinesh Singh named chief technology and information officer at NDTV Group

NOIDA: Some careers are built on a single bet. Dinesh Singh’s was placed in February 1999, when he joined NDTV, and it has paid off handsomely. In August 2026 he became chief technology and information officer of NDTV Group, capping 27 years and nine months at the network and 33 years in the business.

The promotion is less a leap than a coronation. Singh has been the group’s chief technology officer since May 2010, a stretch of 16 years in which he ran television network operations, corporate IT, IT broadcast technology, satellite communication systems and the complete digital OTT ecosystem. He also designed, planned, set up and managed end-to-end TV broadcast facilities and digital OTT workflows, while handling P&L and business operations forecasting, long-range planning and budgeting, and large-scale project management. Few executives in Indian media can claim such a sweep, from the control room to the balance sheet.

His stated philosophy for the new role is a crisp one: not AI everywhere, but AI in every workflow. It is a sensible line in an industry prone to buzzwords. Rather than sprinkling artificial intelligence across the business for show, Singh wants it embedded where work actually gets done. For a newsroom that lives on speed and accuracy, that is the right instinct.

The record behind the credo is long. Before the chief technology officer’s chair, Singh spent more than 11 years, from February 1999 to May 2010, as head of broadcast operations and engineering, based in Delhi. The honours piled up along the way. In 1999 Panasonic Professional Equipment Division, Singapore, gave him a certificate of achievement on its DVCPRO range of camcorders and VTRs. In 2001 came a certificate from Ikegami Broadcast Limited, Japan, on camcorders and studio cameras. In 2003 he was certified on MPEG-2 compression technology with the full MCPC chain from Harmonic, USA, and on MPEG-4 compression technology from Envivo, USA. He also became an Omnibus news automation super user and was certified on Irdeto encryption systems.

Two awards stand out. In 2004 the CBA recognised him for cost-effective engineering, after he adopted MPEG-4 for a DSNG OB van and saved on satellite bandwidth. In 2008 NAB, USA, recognised him under its International Broadcasting Excellence honours for designing a studio on wheels and using it effectively for the General Election 2009 and Metro nation, Delhi. Thrift and innovation, in other words, have long gone together in his work.

The foundations were laid earlier still. From November 1996 to January 1999, Singh was manager, project, at Cinecita Compotronics Pvt. Ltd. There he completed India’s first digital studio project, with nine cameras in each house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. Camera operation was robotics-based, so no cameraman was needed in either house, and the project was finished in eight months. He also completed a film-based project at Ramoji Rao Film City, Hyderabad, in four months. His third assignment, the Bangladesh National Open University project, took seven months and covered three studio and PCR units with six cameras each, three audio studios with an FM broadcast station, a tape library, a post-production facility, a standard conversion and duplication facility, and a microwave radio link to a local government channel.

Before that, from January 1994 to October 1996, he was senior engineer in the Sony Broadcast and Professional Equipment Division at New Video Limited, an authorised sales and service representative for Sony. He worked as a service and repairs engineer on U-Matic, Betacam SP and Digital Betacam VTRs and camcorders, as well as video switchers and routers. Fixing the machines first is a good way to learn how to run them later.

Singh holds a B.E. and a postgraduate diploma in business management, a mix of engineering rigour and commercial sense that shows in his record. His own announcement was characteristically modest: he said he was happy to share that he is starting a new position. The industry will have little trouble seeing why NDTV Group chose to put its technology and information in his hands.