Network18 Media & Investments Limited (d/b/a Network18 Group) is an Indian media conglomerate owned by the Reliance Industries with 56.89% share headed by Mukesh Ambani and rest of 43.11% is equity holding. Rahul Joshi is the managing director, chief executive officer and group editor-in-chief, and Adil Zainulbhai is the chairman of its board of directors.

Incorporated in 1996 by Geeta and Rakesh Gupta, the company was acquired by Ritu Kapur and Raghav Bahl to be converted into a conglomerate holding company between 2003 and 2006. It oversaw one of the largest collections of media properties in India following its conversion but became encumbered with debt due to aggressive expansions. In 2012, the company entered into a debt agreement with Reliance Industries, through which it was granted a number of channels from the ETV Network. The agreement eventually enabled a hostile takeover of the company in 2014.

SGA Finance and Management Services was incorporated on 16 February 1996, as a private limited company by Geeta and Rakesh Gupta and acquired soon afterwards by Vidya Devi and Anil Jindal. The company had remained inactive without any clear prospects until it was later acquired by the promoters of Television Eighteen India Limited.

The news broadcasting company Television Eighteen (TEIL) founded by Ritu Kapur and Raghav Bahl, became a public limited company in 1999 and its initial public offering (IPO) received an overwhelming response. The investments through the IPO exceeded the target set by the company by a magnitude of over 50 times by the end of the year, raising ₹2,511 crore (equivalent to ₹31 billion or US$370 million in 2023) in the process. This decreased the promoters' stake in the company from 75% to 26.11% by 2002 causing complications. The company was in the middle of preparations to launch a Hindi business news channel but could no longer meet regulatory guidelines. TEIL was in a joint venture with CNBC since 1998, and the news channel to be launched was called CNBC Awaaz. The guidelines required the Indian promoters to have more than 51% stake in their company to be able to establish a new uplink for broadcasting.

In 2003, SGA Finance was acquired by Ritu Kapur and Raghav Bahl, in to order to launch the channel and Bahl became its managing director. The company raised ₹5 crore (equivalent to ₹6.2 crore or US$730,000 in 2023) through two batches of investments from the two promoters in March 2003 and in January 2004, and then incorporated a subsidiary called SGA News. In the meantime, the government introduced a 26% foreign equity cap in the news broadcasting industry. In response to the new regulations the joint venture with CNBC was discarded and the partnership converted into a content branding and franchise agreement. In the financial year 2004–2005, TEIL invested ₹25 crore (equivalent to ₹31 crore or US$3.7 million in 2023) in SGA News for preferences stocks. CNBC Awaaz was launched on 13 January 2005.

In the financial year 2005–2006, TEIL supplemented its initial investment with an additional ₹39.10 crore (equivalent to ₹49 crore or US$5.7 million in 2023) in SGA News for common stocks. Following this, the boards of both the companies proposed a restructuring which received approval from the shareholders. The companies underwent several rounds of restructuring which came to a conclusion in November 2006. TEIL became a subsidiary of SGA Finance, the promoters gained a majority stake in TEIL, CNBC Awaaz was transferred to TEIL and shareholders of TEIL were accommodated with a stake in SGA Finance. On 20 October 2006, SGA Finance was converted into a public limited company and re-incorporated as Network18 Fincap Limited.

During the restructuring process, TEIL had also founded a subsidiary called Global Broadcast News (GBN). GBN had entered into a franchising partnership with CNN Worldwide to launch the English general news channel CNN IBN in December 2005. Bahl was able to convince several senior professionals working at the leading news broadcaster NDTV including their editor-in-chief Rajdeep Sardesai and the chief financial officer (CFO) Sameer Manchanda to join the enterprise before its launch. Haresh Chawla, the CEO of TEIL and Network18 was instrumental in both convincing Sardesai to quit and Bahl to take on NDTV as their competition. Due to the restructuring, Network18 instead of TEIL was allotted the shares of GBN and by the end of the financial year 2006–2007, Network18 held both GBN and TEIL as its subsidiaries; GBN operated CNN IBN and TEIL operating all the business news channels along with the information websites Moneycontrol and News Wire. Network18 was converted into a public limited company in 2006, and listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in 2007.

Global Broadcast News (GBN), the subsidiary operating CNN IBN became a publicly traded company in January 2007 and its IPO generated a successful response, similar to that of Television Eighteen India Limited (TEIL). GBN was renamed as IBN18 Broadcast, and on 1 December 2007, Network18 Fincap itself was renamed to Network18 Media & Investments. Network18 began diversifying with cross media interests in 2008. It had high liquidity and expanded rapidly, it started the film production house called Indian Film Company (IFC), launched the shopping channel Home Shop18, and entered into an franchise agreement to launch the Indian edition of the Forbes business magazine, while IBN18 Broadcast entered into a joint venture with the Marathi language newspaper Lokmat to launch the Marathi news channel IBN Lokmat, and began a joint venture with ViacomCBS to initiate the group's foray in mass media and general entertainment channels under Viacom18.