New Delhi Television Ltd

Dear Shareholders
 
 I would like to take this opportunity to thank our shareholders for the
 support and understanding through these unusually difficult times. The
 fallout of the global recession and its impact on India has challenged
 NDTV, like it has done many other media and non-media companies. We
 will eventually be judged by our response to the external crisis and on
 the clarity of action that distinguishes between externalities beyond
 our control and factors endogenous, within our control. NDTV is proud
 to record that we are now widely recognized to be the lead organisation
 in India - in the Media sector - in our handling and response to what
 is considered to be the worst economic crisis in almost 100 years. A
 crisis that very few anticipated, either its timing or its severity.
 
 It is now almost a year since the global crisis hit the Indian economy
 and the media sector. Perhaps the first action, the path of least
 resistance, that most industries took was to cut back on their
 advertising spend. Since Indias Media sector is still predominantly
 dependent on advertising revenues (subscription revenues are today less
 than 10% of gross income and are expected to rise to 50% when the
 switch from analogue to digital distribution takes place over the next
 few years) the top line of most media companies were hit hard. NDTV was
 of course no exception. We needed to respond, and we did. It is now
 clear that NDTV is bouncing back faster and with a more long term and
 durable model than most others in the sector.
 
 As our first steps, NDTV identified key factors that are within our
 control: to cut costs and unnecessary expenditure that grew as a
 wasteful creature of boom times; and to boost revenues by new and
 innovative programming.
 
 Cutting costs is perhaps the area in which NDTVs focus helped it lead
 the media industry. The aim is to make NDTV once again a lean and
 efficient machine that will go into the future as a profitable
 enterprise not only in boom times but in lean times too. I enclose a
 letter that the Managing Director, Radhika Roy and I wrote to all
 members of NDTV (excerpts):
 
 Dear All
 
 It is now clear that the Indian economy is virtually in a recession and
 NDTV must prepare itself for this global and Indian economic downturn.
 Everyone should be ready to tighten their belts for a while please.
 
 This is also a good time to revisit our core strengths of excellence,
 professionalism and efficiency. Lets take a pledge to reinforce these
 values and re-invent ourselves. There are many external factors that we
 cannot control - but there are many internal factors, intrinsic to our
 daily lives at NDTV that we can control - we need to reaffirm our
 command over these and take NDTV to a new and higher plane.
 
 The time for complacency is over. Each one of us needs to increase our
 productivity, our efficiency, our desire to learn and improve. Let us
 see this global economic crisis as much an opportunity as a challenge:
 this is the time to streamline our operations, excise any flab that the
 system may have gained in the boom times and return to being a lean,
 tough, strong, efficient and compassionate organisation.
 
 Let us take a pledge to cut costs and improve efficiency, without in
 any way compromising quality which should remain at the core of all
 NDTVs operations.
 
 Lets take this opportunity to make NDTV a robust and efficient
 organisation - lets build the foundations for a strong NDTV that will
 make us all proud and lead Indias media not just today but 50 years
 from now too.
 
 Think NDTV.
 Thank you
 Radhika and Prannoy
 
 Innovative Programming: This year we created and began the development
 of new properties that promise to make us a leading organisation in
 corporate social responsibility and protecting Indias environment.
 Generously sponsored by Toyota, NDTV tied up with TERI to produce and
 telecast The Greenathon - Indias first 24 hour telethon on the
 environment. During the 24 hours, viewers were invited to make
 donations towards using TERIs solar lighting to bring light to
 villages in India that are without electricity. The Greenathon was a
 huge success and caught the imagination of the nation - from young
 students, to the regular family-viewer; to celebrities (Shahrukh Khan
 was the biggest donor). Another major new show that created waves and a
 generated what many described as a feel good factor was NDTVs Seven
 Wonders of India - sponsored by the State Bank of India and Tata
 Infocom. (Such a novel and noble idea Says Amitabh Bachchan in his
 blog)
 
 Beyond News: 2008-2009 was the year that NDTVs expansion into the
 beyond-news domain under the banner of NDTV Networks began to show
 results; though the environment was very difficult.
 
 NDTV Imagine took on some extremely tough competition to emerge as a
 very credible challenger in the GEC space.  Strong fiction programming
 like Bandini and Jyoti helped NDTV Imagine to break through the clutter
 of second tier channels to carve out a niche for itself. More recently,
 this position was consolidated by reality shows like Rakhi ka Swayamvar
 over the summer which raised NDTV Imagines weekly GRPs to 133 placing
 it firmly in the top 4 GEC channels.
 
 Similarly, NDTV lifestyle had a great year, making the number one
 position its own in that genre. NDTV convergence saw a sharp jump of
 page views, revenues and unique users - especially during big events
 like the Mumbai attacks.  Exciting new plans are planned - and the best
 is clearly still to come.
 
 In the final analysis, dear shareholders, cost cutting and innovating
 programming has made this a crucial year for NDTV. Our response to the
 external crisis should show results in the very near future and the
 news and allied standalone businesses should turn profitable once the
 economy revives as is projected while the beyond news businesses,
 which have such great potential, improve their performance every day.
 
 In many ways this will be looked as a critical year for NDTV: a year in
 which NDTV took some major steps to become a more efficient and lean
 organisation. They say never waste a crisis - let us continue to work
 together to ensure we emerge even stronger and more efficient.
 
 Place:New Delhi                                 Dr. Prannoy Roy
 Date :July 22, 2009                                    Chairman