Swami Ramdev’s Vedic Broadcasting to launch regional channels in India

Swami Ramdev’s Vedic Broadcasting has announced the launch of seven regional spiritual channels.

The company, which runs Aastha TV, will target Tamil, Telugu and Kannada speaking audiences. They are expected to launch within a month after clearance from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. It is also planning on launching Odia, Assamese, Malayalam and Bengali language channels, which are yet to be cleared for launch. The new channels will air dubbed content from the existing Hindi channels.

Vedic Broadcasting currently broadcasts four channels including Aastha TV, Aastha Bhajan, Vedic TV and Aryan TV.

Asked about the target to break even, SK Tijarawala, Spokesperson, Patanjali Products and also the Advisor and National Head of Aastha, said, “To start with, these are not intended to earn profits, but more to carry the message of morality and education than to the profits. Even Vedic Broadcasting has taken a long time to become a P&L statement for us. We launched the channel in 2000 and it is now that we are talking about making money on it. With the new channels, our only aim is to recover the basic money required for the survival.”

“There is a huge language barrier when it comes to spiritual and religious content. While there are differences in the way people obey their religion and have different habits, we are trying to connect the people from different parts of the country in a single thread. After these seven channels, we might also bring up a Marathi language channel. The observation is that the Gujarati and Marathi-speaking audiences are very comfortable in consuming Hindi language content. Hence, if need is felt, we will launch these languages too,” explained Tijarawala.

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