India's largest bilingual independent newswire, Indo-Asian News Service, was launched in 1986 by Gopal Raju, founder-publisher of the New York-based weekly newspaper, 'India Abroad', for a free flow of news between India and North America. It was then known as the India Abroad News Service.
Since then, IANS has acquired an international footprint beyond North America, with clients in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Luxembourg and Bangladesh. It also counts among its subscribers global news and entertainment behemoths Google Inc. and MSN.com, as well as more regional and specialised services, notably MENA FM and Investing.com.
The IANS North American bureau functions out of the UN Headquarters in New York and its other international correspondents operate from London, Dubai, Doha, Islamabad, Kathmandu, Dhaka, Colombo and Toronto.
As is evident from its geographical footprint, IANS is the first with breaking stories from South Asia and has an established track record, vouched for more than 500 Indian and international subscribers, of not missing any piece of Indian diaspora news from North America, UK and the United Arab Emirates.
The leading Indian subscribers of IANS, whose services are available in both English and Hindi, and in both text and audio-visual formats, include The Times of India, International Business Times, Economic Times and Navbharat Times, The New Indian Express, Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Punjab Kesri, Rajasthan Patrika, Rashtriya Sahara, Deccan Herald and Prajavani, The Statesman, Assam Tribune, The Sentinel, India TV, Network 18 (CNN-IBN), TV9 Bharatvarsh, ABP News and The Quint.
Incidentally, all the 21 newspapers published from India's north-east, apart from all the media organisations operating out of Jammu and Kashmir, are IANS subscribers. It is because of this extensive reach that Indian Ministry of External Affairs uses IANS as one of its main sources of news from around the world.
In the words of Sandeep Bamzai, Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief, IANS: "We are in the news business using the jagged edge of differentiated and original content to keep our subscriber family up to speed at all times."
