A year after the death of Indu Jain, the chairperson of Times of India group, the oldest and the most influential news media companies in the country, her sons – Sameer Jain and Vineet Jain are learnt to have decided to part ways, thereby leading to the split of the largest media house.
According to a media report, Bennett and Coleman and Co Ltd, which is better known as Times Group, is all set to be divided between the two brothers, who have been at loggerheads for quite some time over the way the media business should be run and who should have the last word on company decisions.
Samir Jain, the older brother by a little over 10 years, is the vice chairman of the company, while Vineet Jain is the managing director.
The report said the brothers have decided to resolve their disputes by dividing the assets of their sprawling empire.
BCCL is one of India’s oldest media conglomerates, going back to the 1800s. Its businesses and investments span newspapers, television, radio, digital, out-of-home advertising, education, movies, life insurance and more.
The company commands a significant market share in most of these sectors.
At its peak, in the 2018-19 fiscal year, BCCL was clocking more than Rs 10,000 crore in annual revenue, with a net profit of nearly Rs 500 crore. Despite its scale and influence, the Times Group has always been privately and tightly held.
The report said in the past few months, the two brothers have engaged a couple of industrialists who are close to the family to oversee the assessment of the assets and the eventual split.
“The talks are still in preliminary stages and it will take some time for the separation really takes place,” the report added.
The India news industry has seen three of its most disastrous years in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Legacy print businesses were anyway on a decline given the economic slowdown in 2019; the pandemic came as a shock on top of that in early 2020.
Yet, the BCCL has borne the brunt of the pandemic as well as the economic slowdown. Revenue has shrunk in these years and the company has reported losses for the past two fiscal years, for the first time in about two decades.
From Rs 10,468 crore in 2018-19, BCCL’s revenue dropped to Rs 9,733 in 2019-20 and further to Rs 6,210 crore in 2020-21, the report said.
