It oversaw one of the largest collections of media properties in India following its conversion but became encumbered with debt due to aggressive expansions.

SGA Finance and Management Services was incorporated on 16 February 1996,[2] as a private limited company by Geeta and Rakesh Gupta and acquired soon afterwards by Vidya Devi and Anil Jindal.

[9] Bahl was able to convince several senior professionals working at the leading news broadcaster NDTV including their editor-in-chief Rajdeep Sardesai and the chief financial officer (CFO) Sameer Manchanda to join the enterprise before its launch.

[12] Global Broadcast News (GBN), the subsidiary operating CNN IBN became a publicly traded company in January 2007 and its IPO generated a successful response, similar to that of Television Eighteen India Limited (TEIL).

[14] It had high liquidity and expanded rapidly, it started the film production house called Indian Film Company (IFC),[11] launched the shopping channel Home Shop18,[13] and entered into an franchise agreement to launch the Indian edition of the Forbes business magazine,[15] while IBN18 Broadcast entered into a joint venture with the Marathi language newspaper Lokmat to launch the Marathi news channel IBN Lokmat,[16] and began a joint venture with ViacomCBS to initiate the group's foray in mass media and general entertainment channels under Viacom18.

[13] Over the past years, the market had changed rapidly, the group was facing increased competition from other broadcasters,[23] and advertising revenue had decreased due to economic downturn.

[11] According to company insiders, he was persistently trying to convince Bahl to not enter into a debt agreement with Mukesh Ambani and instead raise funds by divesting part of the group's stake in the subsidiary Viacom18.

[26] On 12 November 2012, IMT passed a resolution which allowed two senior officials from RIL to be appointed as additional trustees and Bahl lost further control within the trust.

[32] There was ambiguity over severance packages and compensations and the human resources department was accompanied by executives of the RIL backed IMT in abrupt handing out of termination letters to employees without prior notice, who were then told to leave within 10 minutes.

[24] Kejriwal was the head of the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement and had made several allegations against various politicians and businessmen, including Mukesh Ambani.

[25] According to an anonymous insider present at a meeting between the executives of Network18 and RIL, the right-hand man of Ambani, Manoj Modi had threatened Bahl by stating "You are calling us a dacoit, you are shouting that we are crony capitalists.

"[24] Around the same time, the network increasingly began leaning right wing and attempted to publicise Narendra Modi as the prospective prime ministerial candidate with feature pieces and continuous reporting.

It was noted that due to the structure of the transaction, RIL had in effect partly financed its takeover by raising funds from the company's own subsidiaries such as TV18 Broadcast.

[37] Deepak Parekh, the chairman of Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) and Adil Zainulbhai were also inducted into the company as independent directors in the board.

The editor-in-chief of the flagship general news channel CNN IBN, resigned within a week of the takeover with the reason that the management was interfering in editorial decision making and dictating what could or could not be aired.

[47] Infotel, the broadband subsidiary of RIL had been reincorporated as Reliance Jio Infocomm and was in the process of launching its data transfer business.

[45] It was suggested that the synergy would alleviate stresses posed by unstable market conditions in the news broadcast industry,[28] while Jio would provide exclusive content from Network18 productions to increase traffic towards itself and expand its customer base.

[53] Network18 was one of the organisations featured,[53][54] and the sting displayed positive responses from senior marketing executives of the company to a proposition of entering into an agreement for undisclosed paid news to promote Hindutva political propaganda.

[55] The implications of the sting raised questions about media independence in India,[56] and was described as a part of a phenomenon where the separation of editorial and marketing departments of news organisations are increasingly blurred due to advertisement business models.

[57] In 2019, Network18 initiated heavy cost cutting measures, increments and new hires were frozen while budgets for employing freelancers were greatly reduced.

Newsrooms were demoralised as uncertainty grew among employees and outlets such as Firstpost which relied heavily on freelancers were severely affected in their operations.

[59][60] On 28 November, Bloomberg broke the news that Ambani was also in talks with The Times Group to potentially sell off the entire media conglomerate as it was suffering from losses.

In the following period, Network18's business news website Moneycontrol published an article which claimed that the newly founded joint venture, BloombergQuint was on the verge of collapse.

[69][68] According to some analysts, the consolidation would streamline the corporate structure of the company and make it a more attractive option for strategic investors,[70][71] while others stated that it decreased the likelihood of an agreement with Sony due to its key interest, the entertainment assets of Network18 becoming closely associated with the news operations, where there were restrictions over foreign ownership.

[11] According to Raghav Bahl, the entire credit for enabling Network18 to establish a diverse variety of partnerships with the likes of CNN Worldwide, CNBC, Forbes, Viacom and History Channel belonged to Chawla.

[42][86] Rahul Joshi, the editorial director at The Economic Times was recruited and appointed as both the CEO and editor-in-chief of the entire group following the takeover.

[90] It is parent company of 46 mass media channels in 8 languages which include the franchises of Colors, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1 and Comedy Central.

[98][99] The joint venture also owns the production studio called Viacom18 Motion Pictures which has produced critically acclaimed films such as the Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), Kahaani (2012) and Queen (2014).

[92] The studio has an additional digital production division called Tipping Point which produces content for Voot and JioCinema, the OTT platform of Reliance Jio.

[100] Among other divisions of Viacom18 are Integrated Network Solutions (INS) which develops intellectual properties and Viacom18 Consumer Products which manages the licensing business of the venture.