Raghav Bahl already rules the television news space in the world’s largest democracy. His broadcast network comprises two business news channels—CNBC-TV18 in English and CNBC Awaaz in Hindi (both market leaders that account for almost 70% of the advertising revenue in the TV business news segment) and two mainstream news channels—CNN-IBN, market leader in English news that has exclusive partnership with CNN, the Time Warner news venture, and IBN-7, the third largest Hindi general news channel, in a partnership with Jagran Prakshan Ltd, a leading Hindi publication group.

Last year, the 45-year-old managing director of TV18 Group acquired Crisil MarketWire, a leading business news wire service, and he also runs a host of Internet properties across consumer services and content domains, including one of India’s largest business portals, www.moneycontrol.com. The group’s revenues were around Rs330 crore in 2006-07 and his flagship company, TV18 Ltd, has a market capitalization of Rs4,600 crore, making Bahl both a powerful and a rich entreprenuer.

But this is just the beginning as far as Bahl is concerned.

“Today, we are India’s largest news broadcast group... We want to be a very large media and entertainment group with a significant presence across the television broadcast business, Internet and films, and filmed content space,” he says.

It isn’t just talk. On 22 May, Bahl signed a 50:50 joint venture with Viacom Inc., one of the leading global entertainment content companies, to launch a general entertainment channel. He has also taken the plunge into movie making and says films will be a significant part of his overall content business. He has just sketched out ambitious plans for a separate events business.

That leaves Bahl with no presence in radio and print. While he says he won’t get into radio, Bahl says he would love to buy “a good business newspaper, if only their owners would want to sell”.

In a relatively short time, Bahl has come a long way. In the early 1980s, as a student, he used to anchor programmes for state-run public broadcaster Doordarshan for Rs250 a day. After finishing his MBA from Delhi’s Faculty of Management Studies in 1984, Bahl worked as a management consultant with AF Ferguson & Co. and American Express, but four years later, his original love for media brought him back into television—to Newstrack, the country’s first television news magazine launched by the India Today group. Then, in 1995, it was a content provider relationship with a channel called Asia Business News (ABN) that led to his deal with CNBC, an NBC Universal broadcast venture, to launch a 24x7 business news channel in 1999. (ABN merged with CNBC in Singapore in 1997 to create CNBC Asia).

In a freewheeling interview, Bahl discusses his larger game plan, his relationship with the world’s top three media and entertainment companies and the challenges he foresees. Edited excerpts: