Internal restructuring: NDTV is laying off 25% of its staff

Media house NDTV today said it is considering reduction in the workforce by up to 25 per cent as part of internal restructuring exercise to focus on the core business.

"Given our reprioritisation, our workforce has to be altered too - over next month, we are considering reduction of workforce by up to 25 per cent. We thank these departing employees for their hard work and contribution," NDTV said in a regulatory filing.

NDTV said it had initiated a turnaround plan to bring down costs and improve profitability.

"A part of this plan was implemented in the last quarter and included our much-noted move to new technologies including mobile journalism," it added.

NDTV said the strategy it is adopting "calls for a leaner operation which will feed only our core business: our English and Hindi news channels and NDTV Convergence and its digital teams that run news and other app websites".

"This means minimising all ancillary businesses that NDTV has expanded into over the last few years," it added.

NDTV has also been exiting from non core business verticals. In September, its shareholders had approved sale of its automobile e-commerce firm Fifth Gear Ventures to Autobyte Pvt Ltd. It owned and operated automobile e-commerce portal carandbike.com.

In June, they had approved the sale of its Indian wear e-commerce firm NDTV Ethnic Retail Ltd to Nameh Hotels & Resorts Pvt Ltd.

For the quarter ended June 30, 2017, NDTV reported a net loss of Rs 22.01 crore as against net loss of Rs 44.55 crore in the year-ago period.

Shares of NDTV were trading 1.10 per cent higher at Rs 46 on BSE.