News and professional information providers

The news and the data behind it, sold to newsrooms, professionals and the public

Open a news app and you will often see the same story, word for word, in several newspapers, marked with a news agency's name, such as Reuters. A news agency gathers news and sells it to newsrooms, which print or post it. The largest news businesses today are not newspapers. They sell news and data to professionals, and India builds a great deal of their technology.

A news agency sells its stories, photos and video to newspapers, TV channels and websites by subscription, so readers see the same story, word for word, in many places.

Selling to professionals. Three kinds of business sell information to people who need it for work:

News agencies

also called wires. They sell a constant stream of stories, photos and video to newspapers, TV channels and websites, by subscription.

Financial terminals

A terminal is a screen of live news, prices and analysis on a trader's or banker's desk. Each user pays a large yearly fee. (More on financial data in Market Segment 20.3, Financial data, ratings and research, in Industry Vertical 20, Wealthtech and capital markets.)

Professional research

Lawyers, accountants and tax advisers pay for databases and software that tell them what the rules are.

These businesses earn from subscriptions paid by companies, which pay far more than the public does for news.

Selling to the public. Newsrooms that write for the public earn in other ways:

Ads

which pay for each reader who visits.

Subscriptions

where readers pay to get past a paywall.

Affiliate commissions

A site compares products, such as credit cards, and earns a fee when a reader buys one through its link.

Data on readers' interests

A site that covers a subject can sell other companies data on which businesses are reading about what. Sales teams use it to find buyers.

Specialist newsrooms cover one subject in depth, such as health or cricket. Their readers share an interest, which makes them valuable to advertisers.

News sold to professionals, through agencies, terminals and research, earns from companies, which pay far more than the public; newsrooms for the public earn from ads, subscriptions, affiliate commissions and data on readers' interests.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has two sub-segments:

The wires and the terminals: news agencies, financial terminals and news sold to businesses

The specialist newsrooms: publishers that cover health, cricket, money and electric vehicles

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The wires and the terminals
The specialist newsrooms

The wires and the terminals

News agencies, financial terminals and news feeds, business-to-business media and buyer-intent data

Thomson Reuters

with engineers in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, runs the Reuters news agency, whose stories and video go to newsrooms around the world. It also sells research and software to lawyers, accountants and tax advisers. Its Indian centres are among its largest. Thomson Reuters has the most job postings in this Industry Vertical. (More on it in Market Segment 43.2, Legal research and legal AI, in Industry Vertical 43, Legaltech, and in Market Segment 11.3, Financial close, FP&A and tax software, in Industry Vertical 11, Finance and accounting software.)

Bloomberg

with engineers in Pune, sells the Bloomberg Terminal, the screen of news, prices and analysis on the desks of traders and bankers. It also runs Bloomberg News. (More on it in Market Segment 20.3, Financial data, ratings and research, in Industry Vertical 20, Wealthtech and capital markets.)

One company covered mainly in another Market Segment also works here:

Informa TechTarget

with engineers in Bengaluru, runs news sites about technology. It sells data on which companies are reading about what, so that sales teams can tell who is getting ready to buy. (More on it in Market Segment 14.2, B2B sales intelligence and ABM platforms, in Industry Vertical 14, CRM and sales tech.)

Dow Jones and News Corp. run their own engineering centres in India. (More on them in the GCC collection.)

The specialist newsrooms

Health information, cricket scores and news, personal-finance comparison, electric-vehicle news

WebMD

part of Internet Brands, with engineers in Mumbai, publishes health information read by millions of Americans each month. It also sells hospital groups the software for their own websites. (More on Internet Brands in Market Segment 33.2, Digital media publishers.)

Cricbuzz.com

part of Times Internet, with engineers in Bengaluru, carries ball-by-ball scores and cricket news to one of the largest sports audiences in the world. (More on Times Internet in Market Segment 33.2, Digital media publishers.)

Forbes Advisor

with engineers in Mumbai, compares credit cards, loans and insurance, and earns when readers buy them. (More on it in Market Segment 21.4, Insurance aggregators and online brokers, in Industry Vertical 21, Insurtech.)

Times of EV

with engineers in Mumbai, publishes news on electric vehicles and clean transport.

Kaitongo

in Bengaluru, is another company in this area.

HT Media, Network18, Moneycontrol, Inshorts and Dailyhunt are not covered in this Market Segment.

The news that writes itself.

News agencies have used software to write simple earnings and sports reports for about ten years. AI models now summarise, translate and draft far more. The agencies are also licensing their archives to the companies that build AI models. A trusted newsroom becomes more valuable as text written by AI multiplies. So does the pressure to use AI inside it.

That is the news business: agencies and terminals that sell news and data to professionals, and specialist newsrooms that write for readers who share an interest. The largest earn from companies, not from readers.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What news, publishing and social media companies hire for.

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