Gautam Adani increased his footprint in the media space on Saturday when group flagship Adani Enterprises (AEL) announced the acquisition of a 50.50 per cent stake in news agency IANS India for an undisclosed sum.

This is the conglomerate’s third acquisition in this segment. Adani had forayed into the media business in March last year when AMG Media Networks, a subsidiary of AEL, bought a 49 per cent stake in Raghav Bahl-curated digital business news platform Quintillion Business Media (QBML) for about Rs 48 crore.

In November this year, the Adani group acquired the remaining 51 per cent to take full control of the entity. QBML operated the business and financial news digital media platform BQ Prime.

Later that year, it acquired around 65 per cent in broadcaster NDTV. BQ Prime has now been rebranded as NDTV Profit. Simultaneously, NDTV also announced that it has re-launched its business channel, NDTV Profit, after BQ Prime.

In a regulatory filing, AEL said that it has now acquired a majority stake in IANS. This purchase has also been carried out by AMNL.

The flagship firm further added that “AMNL has also signed a shareholders’ agreement with IANS and Sandeep Bamzai, a shareholder of IANS, to record their inter-se rights with respect to IANS”.

It added that this stake includes Category I shares —with voting rights and Category II equity shares — without voting rights. The acquisition price was not disclosed.

IANS had a revenue of Rs 11.86 crore in the fiscal year 2022-23.

“All operational and management control of IANS will be with AMNL and AMNL will have the right to appoint all directors of IANS,” it added while pointing out that following the acquisition, IANS is now a subsidiary of AMNL.

Shares of NDTV closed at Rs 266.55 on the BSE on Friday.

The broadcaster has also rallied in line with other Adani group shares that
have outperformed gains in
the benchmark index. Over the last month, the NDTV share has risen by nearly 38 per cent.

While the Adani group’s market value was badly hit by allegations made by a US-based short seller in January, it has made a comeback since March. While the BSE’s combined market cap recently crossed the $4 trillion mark, one of the factors that enabled this feat was the rally in all the Adani group stocks apart from the solid run in other mid-cap and small-cap counters.