BQ Prime, formerly BloombergQuint,
is an Indian business and financial news organization founded as a joint venture of
Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg Televi ...
and
Quintillion Media. Its main content is based on the Indian economy, international finance, corporate law and governance and business news. Within six months of going live, the web portal had one million monthly users, and there were plans to open a free-to-air TV channel. In July 2017, digital video analytics provider Vidooly rated BloombergQuint as the ninth most popular news brand among what it termed new-age news publishers. In September 2017, BloombergQuint launched a digital live streaming service available on its website (www.bloombergquint.com), the
Bloomberg Terminal and BloombergQuint social platforms. The service includes daily live programming from both global and local markets. It launched a
WhatsApp
WhatsApp (also called WhatsApp Messenger) is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by American company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). It allows us ...
service in November 2017. It also announced a partnership with
Nasscom,
T-Hub
T-Hub (Technology Hub) is an innovation intermediary and business incubator based in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. Based on the triple helix model of innovation, it is a partnership between the Government of Telangana, three academic institutes i ...
and the government of
Karnataka
Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
to launch 'ScaleUP', an initiative designed to help emerging companies and start-ups scale for growth in November 2017.
History
Raghav Bahl, the founder and former managing director of
Network 18, set up Quintillion Media along with his wife Ritu Kapur within six months of his controversial exit from Network18 in July 2014. Later, he signed a joint venture with
Bloomberg L.P. to launch a digital product – BloombergQuint and a TV channel. According to the deal, Raghav Bahl would own 74% stake and Bloomberg the remaining 26%; the pact was for a 10-year period, as reported by Livemint.
NASSCOM , T-Hub and
Government of Karnataka
The Government of Karnataka, abbreviated as, GoK, or simply Karnataka Government, is a democratically-elected state body with the governor as the ceremonial head to govern the Southwest Indian state of Karnataka. The governor who is appointed ...
partnered with BloombergQuint to launch ScaleUp an initiative to help emerging companies and start-ups scale for growth. Somdutta Singh, co-chair of NASSCOM Product Council, was the Chief Strategic Advisor for ScaleUp.
On 5 May 2022, the company changed its name from BloombergQuint to BQ Prime.
[
]
TV channel
After an initial decision by Quint to scale back operations to focus on digital only, the partnership with Bloomberg continued. While in 2016 the BQ combine had nod of FIPB for an English news channel they were unable to acquire a broadcast licence from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (India)
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Ministry of I&B) is a ministerial level agency of the Government of India responsible for the formulation and administration of rules, regulations and laws in the areas of information, broadcasting, the ...
. Following this in 2017, BQ acquired a licence of Y TV from Horizon Satellite Services Private Limited and applied for a name change of the licence to BloombergQuint in the Ministry. By 2020, the company decided to shut down the broadcast division and write off Rs 200 crores. By 2022, the partners Bloomberg and Quint parted ways as they still did not have a license. Having failed with Quint, Bloomberg was seeking Indian partners for its third planned stint in the Indian market.
See also
* The Quint
References
{{Bloomberg
Bloomberg L.P.
Indian news websites
Indian companies established in 2016
Mass media companies of India