BBC News Begins Huge India Investment

BBC News has initiated its investment in India by launching news services in four Indian languages: Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, and Telugu – and re-launching a nightly TV news bulletin in Hindi, BBC Duniya, to be broadcast on India News. The new services are available online and on social media.

A significant BBC investment in India also includes an expansion of news bureau in Delhi with two new TV studios. The Delhi bureau is now the BBC’s largest outside the UK. It will become a video, TV, and digital content production hub for the whole of South Asia. This follows a huge talent drive in India, with the BBC recruiting more than 150 new journalistic staff from across the country. BBC News already broadcasts to 28 million people in Bengali, Hindi, Tamil and Urdu, as well as English.

The investment in India comes as part of the BBC World Service’s biggest expansion since the 1940s, made possible by GBP 291m investment from the UK Government. The BBC has already launched news in Pidgin, Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Tigrinya, and Korean, with services in Yoruba, Igbo, and Serbian to follow.