The news follows the announcement that Television Eighteen Group (TV18), India's largest news and information network, will acquire the assets and staff of Crisil MarketWire (CMW), India's financial news agency, which TV18 will grow under the new name of NewsWire18.

NewsWire18 has sourced Tenfore's ticker technology for its state-of-the-art data centre in Mumbai. In addition, NewsWire18 will be the regional distributor for other Tenfore products and services.

Pankaj Aher, CEO, NewsWire18, says: "The launch of the new data centre is at the heart of our plans to expand our news service into an integrated information service for the Indian and South Asian markets. After considering 13 market data providers, we selected Tenfore for its cutting edge and flexible technology platform and ability to meet our customers' specific requirements."

NewsWire18's key criteria when selecting a provider included flexibility of approach and speed of implementation, particularly at the top management level. Tenfore has developed feed handlers for the collection of the data from key local Indian exchanges, including the Bombay Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange, the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange, and the Multi-Commodity Exchange. In addition, its Contribution API allows for the provision of NewsWire18's contributed data through the data centre, including the CMW news service, and local foreign exchange, fixed income and wholesale debt market data. Tenfore also provides NewsWire18 with a bespoke version of QuoteSpeed, its desktop workstation, for the delivery of the data to its institutional end users, as well as the tools to integrate the data into other third party applications.

NewsWire18 plans to roll the technology out to all 1,500 existing users of the CMW news service by the end of the year. Historically, the CMW news service was delivered exclusively through the local Telerate agent, IQS. However, following its acquisition by Reuters, users will no longer be able to access the service through this channel.

NewsWire18 has acquired a perpetual license for the ticker technology and entered into a long- term agreement for Tenfore to provide ongoing software maintenance and second-level operational support, including any relevant software upgrades.

Gordon Bloor, CEO, Tenfore, adds: "This is a strategically important deal for us and represents our commitment to expanding our global reach. TV18's acquisition of CMW is a clear indication of the explosion that's happening in today's Indian news and information industry. With NewsWire18 acting as our local partner, we can jointly play a key role in the delivery of global data to institutional customers in this crucial market."

With 3,000 direct end users, Tenfore boasts more than 500 corporate clients including, HSBC and ING, and 45 wholesale/redistribution clients including Thomson Financial and GFI.