United News of India
| Industry | News media |
|---|---|
| Founded | 19 December 1959 |
| Founder | Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy |
| Headquarters | 9, Rafi Marg, New Delhi-110001, India |
| Website |
www |
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United News of India (UNI) is a multilingual news agency in India. It was founded in December 1961 as an English news agency. Its commercial operations were started from 21 March 1961. With its Univarta, a Hindi news service, UNI became one of the multilingual news service in the world. In 1992, it started its Urdu news service and hence became the first news agency to provide Urdu news. Currently, it is one of the important news agencies in India, supplying news in English, Hindi, and Urdu languages. Its news bureaus are present in all state capitals and major cities of India.
Press Council of India (PCI) in its first Press Commission report (1952–1954) emphasized on the importance of second news agency so that they can act as corrective to each other. But even after the support of PCI, United Press of India collapsed in 1958, due to financial problems. So some leading newspapers felt the need of a second news agency along with Press Trust of India. This led to the formation of United News of India under Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, sponsored by eight leading newspapers The Hindu, The Times of India, The Statesman, Amrita Bazar Patrika, Hindustan Times, Hindustan Standard, Deccan Herald and Aryavarta.
In its starting days, the company had to use old United Press of India teleprinters, that were rusted due to disuse since 1958. The company increased its capacity from 13 teleprinters in 1961 to 408 by the end of 1975. In 1971, the company's revenue was Rs. 54.31 lakh, which increased to Rs. 67.73 lakhs in 1974 and Rs. 87.14 lakh in 1975. UNI had 5 staff members when it started its operation, but the number expanded to 697, with 139 journalists, 392 non-journalists, and 166 stringers, by the end of 1975.
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