As per analysts, the deal size in the present day would be anywhere above Rs 50 crore On the blocks for a long time now, Anil Ambani-owned business news channel BTVI has a new owner. The channel that stopped operations on August 31 last has signed an MOU with its purchaser TNP Group. The deal transaction, however, is still under process says the promoters of TNP Group that now holds 100% equity of the channel. Vaibhav Tewari who was part of BTVI has been made the COO of the company. Interestingly, the new owners of channel are not from the media industry. The TNP group is a Delhi-NCR based agri-based food processing company that also has other dealings in infrastructure and consultancy services. “We are always on the search of sick units. We purchase such businesses in auction and either look for investors or add it to our own portfolio depending upon the nature of business. BTVI is one such acquisition. We have given the channel a LOI (letter of intent) with our terms and conditions for purchase,” said one of the promoters on conditions of anonymity.

While the investors have enough funds to run the business, the decision lies entirely on the financial viability of reviving the channel which includes paying off all past debts and acquiring a media licence. “We will retain the company and run the channel only if the deal size costs us less than the cost of acquiring a media licence,” said one of the promoters of TNP Group. As per the said promoter, all former employees have been given their full and final payments barring 2-3 of them from the core team. “We are working closely with the remaining team of BTVI to come up with a due diligence report to check all transactions of the company ever since it was taken over from Bloomberg,” he said. The report is expected to be ready by January 15, 2021, after which the next course of action will be decided. However, according to sources close to the development, an initial synopsis of the assessment has already been prepared. As per the synopsis the bills of creditors have major discrepancies. After a long period of financial struggle, on September 1, 2019, the news channel took to social media announcing pausing of their broadcast operations. It has been a tumultuous journey for BTVI throughout. The channel was re-launched as BTVI in August 2016 by the now bankrupt Anil Ambani group. Before that the channel was on air for 10 years as Bloomberg TV India. The re-launch took place because Bloomberg had moved out and found a new partner in Raghav Bahl’s Quintillion Media. They launched a digital video news platform called Bloomberg Quint, which they wanted to convert into a TV channel. That dream too remains stuck in legal battles. A long time before the channel finally shut shop, BTVI was in talks with several media houses for a licence sale. A deal with a popular media house that has news offerings across genres but business was keen on the acquisition. However, the deal fell through towards the end of 2019 as BTVI had allegedly quoted an exorbitant price for the same. As per analysts the deal size in the present day would be anywhere above Rs 50 crore.