India Transformation Summit, a three-day virtual summit organised by Elets Technomedia to define the story of India’s transformation. George Kuruvilla, Chairman and Managing Director, Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India joined the session themed – ‘Central Government PSUs Steering the National Economy and Making Aatma Nirbhar Bharat’.
Mr Kuruvilla commenced with a brief about BECIL saying, “BECIL was set up in 1995 and we completed 25 years of our service in March this year.” Adding on he said, “We started as small consultancy company Prasar Bharti which includes Doordarshan and All India Radio (AIR) but later on we expanded our horizon of work. Our original expertise is in television and broadcasting. Later on, cable TV came in and we became the first to educate people about the new technology.”
Hence there was a need to structure training and auditing and apt infrastructure for the cable TV industry as it started mushrooming in the early 1990s post the Iraq war. With these opportunities to tap, we started evolving as the cable TV industry, told Mr Kuruvilla. Later on, private FM came in and all the private FM setup was built up by BECIL on the AIR platform. From using AIR and Doordarshan towers for setting up private FM and fitting transmitters in over 86 cities we supported the private FMs to flourish, he added.
Moreover, Mr Kuruvilla said, “We provided studios for the education sector. Many central universities have their media centres where they record their TV programmes. BECIL provided them with studios and FM setup.” Therefore, across the gamut of broadcasting, BECIL contributed significantly to opening more and more opportunities for the media and broadcasting sector to flourish in India in the last 25 years, add Mr Kuruvilla.
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Talking about the last five years and the aim of BECIL for further growth, he said, “Our main purpose was that how do we leverage the technologies that we know and spread it across into a converged world today.” There is a huge convergence between, telecommunications, broadcasting, IT, and a whole gamut of technologies that are coming in and once we understand these techs we started getting into CCTVs, GIS, surveillance, smart cities, IoT, access control and integrating end to end solutions for various departments and more. So, BECIL has now diversified into different technology-oriented areas, added Mr Kuruvilla.
Further, citing the example of COVID-19 crisis and working of BECIL, Mr Kuruvilla highlighted, “We are working and connected with most of the central government departments. We continued providing our services even during the COVID-19 time.” Mr Kuruvilla announced that BECIL has always been there to aid the government and worked to help the government procure technology or other things in the time of emergency. He added, “BECIL has been and is available for the centre and the state departments for any sought of procurement of technology, instruments or even other things.”
Concluding his insightful address, he said, “PSUs have been always delivering their services to bridge the gap between the private and the government sectors and ministries providing both technological and non-technological services… We have been helping startups, the private sector which do not know how to engage government departments for using their products and that is where our role comes in. So, PSUs have been actively contributing to India’s growth and development.