News Broadcasting
Sony gets its missing link in NDTV
NEW DELHI: The One Alliance today announced a three year distribution tie-up with NDTV for its proposed two news channels (a story that was broken by indiantelevision.com yesterday).
At the announcement in New Delhi this morning, NDTV president Prannoy Roy claimed that the offerings, to be launched simultaneously around 31 March, will be cutting edge, aimed at becoming the No.1 in their respective languages.
The agreement, as disclosed by Sony Entertainment TV India chief executive Kunal Dasgupta, was signed today at a five-star hotel’s coffee shop by NDTV president Prannoy Roy, Dasgupta and Deepak Shourie, managing director of Discovery Networks India.
One Alliance is a joint venture between SET India and Discovery India and the entity’s president is Shantonu Aditya.
Addressing a packed press conference here, Roy said, “We were wooed by others. In the end it was One Alliance that became the first choice because of their professionalism. It’s a great step for us.”
Roy also clarified that both, the Hindi and English news channels- involving software and hardware innovations not seen in India till now, will be launched together and not in a phased manner. He, however, declined to give more details about the channels saying, “There will be other times when we will disclose to the media those details.”
The two news channels would be beamed through PanAmSat satellite, which would mean all the One Alliance channels would be on the same satellite.
“The combination of NDTV’s two news channels with the tremendous reach of the One Alliance will be unbeatable,” Roy maintained.
If one sets aside the surge in viewership of the One Alliance channels (Sony and SET Max) in recent times due to cricket, the bouquet has claimed to be reaching 26 million homes of the estimated 40 million cable and satellite Indian homes.
On One Alliance’s part, Dasgupta said that NDTV’s news channels coming on board would complete the important missing link -news and current affairs, in the bouquet. However, in the short term there would not be any change in the subscription rate of One Alliance channels as, it’s “too early to say anything about the pricing” of the two digitally encrypted news channels coming on board.
“We also hope that by July, we would be able to take the viewership of NDTV channels up to 26 million homes that would be as much as an entertainment channel’s reach,” Dasgupta said.
Ten thousand boxes or IRDs are being fed in the market for the NDTV channels by the One Alliance team, which claimed that the number is almost three times more than another company that proposes to launch an English news channels and is not aligned with any bouquet.
“One Alliance’s objective is to have a small bouquet, but with the most powerful of channels that are in the forefront in their respective genres,” Dasgupta explained.
At the moment the One Alliance bouquet, one of the three in the Indian context, has channels that include Sony, SET Max, AXN, HBO, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and CNBC India. The last is slated to drift away to the Zee Turner bouquet after March 31, on the same day as NDTV – Star marriage comes to an end.
When quizzed on the CNBC India issue, Dasgupta, maintained that no notice has been sent by CNBC India yet to indicate that it is leaving for some other bouquet. “They better give One Alliance a notice well in advance,” he added.
News Broadcasting
India’s AI Future Gets a Neural Kick-Off in Delhi
NDTV IND.AI Summit on 18 Feb 2026 to debate governance, ethics, and India’s big-tech ambitions.
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence is about to get a very Delhi welcome smart, spirited, and ready to out-think the room. On 18 February 2026, New Delhi plays host to the inaugural NDTV IND.AI Summit, a high-stakes pow-wow that promises to put India’s AI ambitions under the brightest spotlight yet. Billed as a deep dive into how artificial intelligence is already rewiring the nation’s economy, policy playbook, and strategic dreams, the one-day event is curated by NDTV in partnership with the Startup Policy Forum. At its core lies a single, sharp question: how do you unleash AI’s transformative power while keeping trust, equity, and sanity intact?
The guest list reads like a who’s-who of global AI heavyweights. Former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak headlines a special session on AI in governance, sharing hard-won lessons on how the technology is reshaping statecraft and decision-making. Joining the fray are OpenAI’s Chris Lehane, UC Berkeley’s AI safety pioneer Stuart Russell, and Google’s James Manyika, voices that will anchor India firmly in the international conversation on accountability, risk, and cross-border cooperation.
Beyond the policy wonks, the Summit rolls up its sleeves for real-world impact. General Catalyst’s Hemant Taneja and other top-tier investors will unpack how AI is redrawing the rules of capital, innovation, and long-term value creation. Separate tracks will tackle AI’s footprint in workplaces, large-scale adoption, productivity shifts, evolving job roles, and organisational culture. India’s digital public infrastructure, often hailed as a global blueprint for inclusive tech gets its own spotlight, alongside a dedicated segment on AI sovereignty: what does true national control look like in a borderless tech universe?
NDTV CEO and editor-in-chief Rahul Kanwal framed the event’s bigger picture, “The IND.AI Summit is about the kind of future we are choosing to build. India has the scale, the talent, and the moral imagination to shape how AI serves society and this Summit is our way of bringing the most credible voices together to define that direction.”
In a world where AI chatter can feel abstract, the New Delhi gathering aims to ground the debate in India’s own story, one that ties cutting-edge innovation to public purpose, domestic priorities to global influence, and raw ambition to responsible stewardship. Whether you’re an algorithm enthusiast or just mildly curious about tomorrow’s headlines, this Summit is India signalling it’s not just catching the AI wave, it intends to help steer it.
