UNI : First news agency to launch Financial Service in India

United News of India (UNI) was launched in March, 1961, and has grown into one of the largest news agencies in Asia. During these years, UNI has acquired an enviable reputation for fast and accurate coverage of all major news events in India and abroad in all areas — politics, economics, business, sports, entertainment, stock markets and so on.

UNI serves more than 1000 subscribers in more than 100 locations in India and abroad. They include newspapers, radio and television networks, web sites , government offices and private and public sector corporations. UNI’s communication network stretches over 90,000 Km in India and the Gulf states.

The news agency has bureaus in all the major cities and towns of India, including all the state capitals and employs more than 325 staff journalists around the country and more than 250 stringers, covering news events from remote corners. UNI also have Correspondents in major world cities such as Washington, London, Dubai, Colombo, Kathmandu, Islamabad, Dhaka, Singapore, Sydney and Vancouver, bringing to our subscribers stories of interest to Indian readers.

UNI has collaboration agreements with several foreign news agencies, including Reuters and DPA , whose stories are distributed to media organisations in India. The agency has news exchange agreements with Xinhua of China, UNB of Bangladesh, Gulf News Agency of Bahrain, WAM of the United Arab Emirates, KUNA of Kuwait News Agency, ONA of Oman and QNA of Qatar.

UNI is currently a major modernisation programme as part of which most of our major bureaus are already linked through a computerised network. It is continuously expanding and extending this network and is also in the process of implementing a project to deliver news, pictures and graphics to our subscribers through the Internet, using NewsML, the international standard for news transmission.

UNI’s wire service is available in three languages — English, Hindi and Urdu. We launched UNIVARTA in Hindi in 1982 and pioneered a wire service in Urdu in 1992. In 1981, UNI became the first Indian news agency to serve subscribers abroad and earn foreign exchange for the country by selling its wire service directly to newspapers in the gulf States and in Singapore through satellite channels.

“UNI has always adopted an innovative approach. We were the first news agency in the country to launch a Financial Service, a Stock Exchange service and a National Photoservice.We also have other services like UNIDARSHAN (Television News Clips and Features), UNISCAN (News Display on Television sets for Hotels, top Government officials and corporate clients), UNIDirect (for top executives in the government, corporate and other sectors) and UNI GRAPHICS (Computer-designed Graphics in ready-to-use form),” a company spokesperson said.