Essel Group

Essel Group (alternatively referred to as the Zee Group) is an Indian conglomerate holding company and corporate promoter headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. The company has had business interests in mass media, broadcasting infrastructure and packaging. It operates the subsidiaries of Zee Media Corporation, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Dish TV and Siti Networks.

The group has been reported to be encumbered with severe debt; a Businessworld article described the company as debt-ridden. As a result, it has conducted several assets sale including the sale of Essel Propack and stake sales of Zee Entertainment Enterprises. Founded in 1926 as the Messrs Ramgopal Indraprasad by Jagannath Goenka, the company was expanded and converted into the Essel Group of Industries by his grandson, Subhash Chandra. Chandra is part of the Goenka (Goel) family which owns and operates the group; he is also the chairman of the company and a Bharatiya Janata Party-backed member of the Rajya Sabha.

In 1926, Jagannath Goenka founded the Messrs Ramgopal Indraprasad as a commercial firm to deal in food grains at the mandi (Product market) in Adampur, Hisar. In 1967, the business suffered a series of losses leaving the Goenka family at a net deficit of ?600,000 (equivalent to ?26 million or US$360,000 in 2019).

In December 1982, the Essel Packaging (later renamed to Essel Propack) was incorporated. Essel Packaging was the venture of the Essel Group into the packaging industry with the primary product being laminated tube units. The following year, the group also began investments for an amusement park in Mumbai. The Essel World was opened in 1989 which became the first amusement park in India. Though the amusement park did not provide sufficient returns, it marked the beginning of the group's venture into the entertainment industry.

In 1992, the Essel Group incorporated the Zee Telefilms Ltd. In the same year, Zee Telefilms entered into a joint venture called Asia Today Ltd with Star TV in order to lease a transponder from the AsiaSat satellite network. Zee TV was the first Hindi Language satellite channel in India. By 1994, the channel had captured 65% of the satellite market share.

Times Group

Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited, abbreviated as B.C.C.L. and The Times Group, is an Indian media conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The company remains a family-owned business with Sahu Jain family owning a majority stake in The Times Group.

On 3 November 1838 the Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce was first published, a predecessor of what would become The Times of India. While starting as a biweekly paper, it was converted to a daily in 1850 and in 1859 the paper was merged with two other papers into the Bombay Times and Standard under editor Robert Knight. Two years later, in 1861, the paper got a more national scope with the title The Times of India. Subsequently the paper saw its ownership change several times until 1892 when an English journalist named Thomas Jewell Bennett along with Frank Morris Coleman (who later drowned in the 1915 sinking of the SS Persia) acquired the newspaper through their new joint stock company, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL). At the time, some 800 people were employed by the paper.

The company, by that time consolidated in the Times of India Group, was taken over from its British owners in 1946 by industrialist Ramkrishna Dalmia. Ramkrishna Dalmia (7 April 1893 – 26 September 1978) was a pioneer industrialist and founder of the Dalmia-Jain group or Dalmia Group and The Times Group. The name is variously written as Ram Krishan Dalmia and Ram Kishan Dalmia. In 1947, Dalmia engineered the acquisition of the media giant Bennett, Coleman by transferring monies from a bank and an insurance company of which he was the Chairman. In 1955, this came to the attention of the socialist parliamentarian Feroze Gandhi who was part of the ruling Congress party headed by his estranged father-in-law Jawaharlal Nehru. In December 1955, he raised the matter in the Parliament, documenting extensively the various fund transfers and intermediaries through which the acquisition had been financed. The case was investigated by the Vivian Bose Commission of Inquiry.

In the court case that followed, where he was represented by the leading British attorney Sir Dingle Mackintosh Foot, he was sentenced to two years in Tihar Jail. But for most of the jail term he managed to spend in hospital. Upon his release his son-in-law Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain to whom he had entrusted running of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. rebuffed his efforts to resume command of the company.

During his time in prison the company was run by his son-in-law Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain. Jain would buy the company a few years later and the company would be primarily run by his family in the years after. The company expanded its presence in the Indian media sphere by founding different papers and local editions of The Times of India.

Decline and revival

The Times of India 1988 stamp of India

The Times of India press published a number of influential English (e.g. Illustrated Weekly of India 1880-1993) and Hindi magazines (e.g. Dharmyug 1949-1997, Sarika, Dinaman 1965-1990s, Parag 1958-1990s) at one time. However the organization faced financial difficulties, and most of them were closed down during the 1990s. The sons of Sahu Ashok Jain, Sahu Samir Jain and Vineet Jain are credited with reviving the financial success of the group.

Sun TV

Sun TV Network is an Indian mass media company headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It is a part of Sun Group and is one of Asia's largest TV networks. Established on 14 April 1992 by Kalanithi Maran, it owns a variety of television channels and radio stations in multiple languages. Its flagship channel is Sun TV, which was the first fully privately owned Tamil channel in India. Sun Group has owned Hyderabad-based IPL team Sunrisers Hyderabad since 2012.

SUN Group currently owns and operates 32 TV channels (24 SD + 8 HD) across Indian languages – Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Bengali.

SUN Group will be launching 8 new HD channels and 3 new SD channels including network's first channel in Marathi language, marking the entry of the company into North Indian market after sun bangla. After this, Sun Group will have a total of 43 channels.

Film production

Sun Pictures is a film production and distribution company established in 2000 it is a Part of Sun TV Network. It produced the TV film Siragugal and Rajnikanth starrer Endhiran. It has distributed more than 20 Tamil films starting from Kadhalil Vizhunthen,and now Producing many big budget movies.

OTT Platform

Sun NXT is a global online audio/video streaming platform owned and operated by Sun TV Network. Has more than 4000 movie titles including movies like Ajith Kumar's Mankatha, Vijay's Sarkar and Rajinikanth's Petta .Sun tv network is planning to invest more it's ott platform Sun NXT by making original web series and original ott movies from the mid of the 2021 .