NDTV announces further downsizing of staff by 25 per cent

NDTV has announced that the company will downsize its workforce up to 25 per cent over the next month, as part of the company’s internal restructuring.

The move is seen as part of the turnaround plan that was initiated earlier, to bring down costs and drive profitability.

Informing the stock exchange on Tuesday, the company said, “A part of this plan was implemented in the last quarter and included our much-noted move to new technologies including to mobile journalism. Our reporters across the country are now using mobile phones for the fastest and most efficient delivery of breaking news.”

With the aim of regaining its financial strength in relation to its broadcast business, some of the ancillary businesses that NDTV expanded into over the last few years would be minimised.

NDTV has also been exiting from non-core business verticals. In September, its shareholders had approved the sale of its automobile e-commerce firm Fifth Gear Ventures to Autobyte Pvt Ltd. It owned and operated automobile e-commerce portal carandbike.com.

In June, they had approved the sale of its Indian wear e-commerce firm NDTV Ethnic Retail Ltd to Nameh Hotels & Resorts Pvt Ltd. For the quarter that ended on June 30, 2017, NDTV reported a net loss of Rs 22.01 crore as against net loss of Rs 44.55 crore in the year-ago period.

“Given our reprioritisation, our workforce has to be altered too – over the next month, we are considering reduction of workforce up to 25 per cent. We thank these departing employees for their contribution and hard work and wish them the very best,” the company said.

As reported by Best Media Info earlier this year,

NDTV had downsized its team in July when it announced that the company is shifting to mobile journalism.

The company argued, “The strategy we are adopting calls for a far leaner operation, which will feed only our core business: our English and Hindi news channels, and NDTV Convergence and its digital teams that run our news and other apps and websites.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com