News Broadcasting
Hinduja TMT bags US BPO contract
MUMBAI: Hinduja TMT (HTMT) has picked up a business process outsourcing (BPO) contract from a US health insurance company.
The contract will initially run for a period of three years and will involve both transactions processing as well as client contact center work in the area of health care.
Speaking to indiantelevision.com, HTMT senior VP Arun Kumar said that while “the training and pilot project started on 12 January, the commercial processing would take off within a month.” This is the second health insurance BPO contract that HTMT has bagged from the US. “Both clients are Fortune 200 companies,” Kumar added.
HTMT has employed 80 people as transaction processors for 3 modules of the training and pilot project. The company is expecting to further add 600 transaction processors to the work force based on its experience with the existing healthcare insurance BPO client.
HTMT vice chairman Solomon Raj was quoted in a company statement saying, “Our existing domain expertise coupled with realization of high quality performance metrics in the health insurance sector was a major factor that made HTMT the preferred vendor of choice.”
The company is in the process of setting up a high-end call center employing medical doctors, states the release. HTMT has taken on lease premises admeasuring 80,000 sq. ft. for building 1400 seat capacity at Bangalore to meet the expanding requirements of its customers including those of the new client. This is in addition to the existing capacity of 1050 seat 52,000 square feet offshore development centre ‘HTMT House’ at Bangalore, which is now fully occupied.
HTMT has won a number of accolades in the recent past. It was recently voted as the second best employee friendly company in the Dataquest-IDC BPO Employee Satisfaction Survey. The first position had gone to the first name of India off-shoring, GE Capital. It was also rated the second largest in the insurance claim processing business by the Business World magazine in terms of number of processors. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500 Program 2003 has recognized HTMT as one of Asia Pacific’s leading technology companies in the year 2003.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI:Â Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
