Sahara Samay Rashtriya, the 24-hour news channel of the Sahara India group, has invested over Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) to set up Asia's biggest digital newsroom in India.

The company has tied up with five international technology vendors including Leitch Inc, Associated Press ENPS, Omnibus Systems of United Kingdom, IBM and Shaf Broadcast for its newsroom which is located at Noida.

"The Sahara Group, which already has extensive media interests in India, believes the investment in newsroom technology will pay dividends in the highly competitive news and current affairs business in India," R S Chauhan, vice-president (engineering and operations), Sahara TV, said.

He added that the tie-ups with the best technology providers globally would mean: "We take stories to air faster."

The company is planning to take seven news channels to air this year. While Sahara Samay Rashtriya and Sahara Samay (Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal) are already operational, Sahara Samay (Madhya Pradesh including Chhattisgarh) and Sahara Samay (Mumbai) are likely to operational within this month, Chauhan said.

He added that the other three channels including Sahara Samay (NCR), Sahara Samay (Rajasthan) and Sahara Samay (Bihar) would also be operational by the end of this year.

While ENPS, a news production system from Associated press, allows content to be shared between channels, its centralised content search engine puts all scripts, news wires, contacts, assignments, graphics and video clips at the user's fingertips.

Omnibus Systems will provide Sahara with automation and asset management solutions. Its technology will assist and automate the capture and processing of all media, provides browsing and online full-resolution editing functionality as well as access to media archive via the internet for remote users.

Leitch Technology will provide Sahara Samay with immediate and simultaneous access to ingested media on their broadcast video server platform for collaboration on news stories and the fastest turnaround time for breaking news.

Across its digital newsroom IT infrastructure, Sahara Publications has deployed IBM eServer xSeries and IntelliStation workstations to be used in news coverage and real time graphic workloads as well as non-linear editing.

The company has 49 bureaus across the country and 37 of them are equipped with a self-contained production facility, Chauhan said.

Also, the media object server gateway, with interconnected systems, will enable multiple players to interact with each other.