Tribe TV
Tribe TV holds a distinctive place in Indian broadcasting history as the country's first Santali-language satellite television channel. Launched on 9 August 2021 and headquartered at Raiganj in North Dinajpur district, West Bengal, the channel was created to serve Santali-speaking tribal communities in their own language, broadcasting news and cultural programming around the clock. It was owned and operated by Kalyani Solvex Private Limited, and its co-founder was Krishna Kalyani, the Member of the Legislative Assembly for the Raiganj constituency. Although the channel later shifted toward Bengali-language programming, was renamed Tribe TV Bangla in 2024, and was relaunched as KTV Bangla on 28 September 2025, its original achievement remains significant: it brought one of India's largest tribal languages, spoken by millions across eastern India, to satellite television for the first time.
Background: The Santali Language and Its Audience
Santali, also spelled Santhali, is the most widely spoken language of the Munda subfamily of the Austroasiatic languages, related to Ho and Mundari. It is spoken mainly in the Indian states of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Odisha, Tripura and West Bengal, and it is one of the languages recognised in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. The Santal community is one of India's largest tribal communities, yet before 2021 its language had no dedicated satellite television channel, even as India's private television industry had grown to hundreds of channels in larger regional languages. Santali speakers who wanted television news and entertainment had to rely on channels in Hindi, Bengali, Odia or other majority languages of their states. Tribe TV was conceived to close that gap, and its planners stated an intention to expand beyond Santali into other popular tribal languages such as Mundari and Kurukh.
Establishment and Launch
Kalyani Solvex Private Limited established the channel at Raiganj in 2020, building the operation during the year before launch. The project received its licence from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and test transmission began ahead of the formal launch, with the channel testing on the GSAT-30 satellite at 83 degrees east as a free-to-air MPEG-4 service. Tribe TV was officially launched on 9 August 2021, a date that coincides with the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, at an event in Kolkata, and it began broadcasting through various satellite and cable platforms. At launch it was carried on regional cable networks including GTPL and Siti Cable. Reports of the launch described the channel's focus states as West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Bihar, the heartland of the Santali-speaking population, and the Jharkhand government's interest in the launch reflected the channel's importance to tribal audiences there.
Ownership and Leadership
Tribe TV was the first satellite channel owned by Kalyani Solvex Private Limited, a Raiganj-based company. The channel's co-founder, Krishna Kalyani, was the sitting MLA for Raiganj in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, giving the venture a prominent local political and business profile in North Dinajpur. Locating a satellite channel headquarters in Raiganj, rather than in Kolkata or Delhi, was itself unusual and significant: it placed a national broadcast operation in a district town of northern West Bengal, in the region the channel served. At the same time, the channel broadcast live programming from Delhi, combining a regional base with a presence in the national capital for news coverage.
Programming in the Santali Phase
In its original form, Tribe TV broadcast 24 hours a day of Santali content, combining news and entertainment for viewers in India and abroad. Its YouTube and promotional descriptions presented it as a round-the-clock Santali news and entertainment service, with dedicated Santali news bulletins forming the core of the schedule. A programme strand titled News at 9 in Santali and Santali special bulletins fronted by Santali anchors gave the language a daily television news presence it had never previously had. For Santali-speaking families, the channel offered something qualitatively different from dubbed or majority-language media: presenters, reporters and cultural programming speaking directly in their mother tongue, reflecting Santal festivals, music, issues and public life.
Shift to Bengali and the Programme Slate
From 2022, the channel's balance of programming shifted from Santali toward Bengali, reflecting both the demographics of its Raiganj base and the commercial realities of regional television in West Bengal. Its documented programme slate from this period was that of a Bengali news and general interest channel, mixing rolling news with discussion, district reporting and features. Shows included the morning programme Good Morning Bengal, the all-day news strand Khabar Saradin, district news in Jelar Khabor, Bengal Today, the fast-paced Bengal X-press, Uttorer Udan Dakshiner Darpan, a Weekly Special Show, the word-based Sobdo Katakati, Ingit, Pothe Panchali, the food strand Rasona Asan, Cinema Safor on film, Dutor Dunia, the world affairs strand Deshe Bideshe, and Metro Junction. The retained Santali News at 9 kept a formal place for the channel's founding language within a schedule that had become predominantly Bengali.
Renaming: Tribe TV Bangla and KTV Bangla
In 2024 the channel was formally renamed Tribe TV Bangla, aligning its public identity with the Bengali-language service it had effectively become. That identity was itself short-lived. On 28 September 2025, the channel was renamed again, becoming KTV Bangla, also rendered as Kalyani TV Bangla, under the same Kalyani Solvex ownership and Raiganj headquarters, broadcasting in standard definition. The sequence of names tells the channel's story in miniature: founded as a pioneering Santali service under the Tribe TV name, it evolved within a few years into a Bengali channel for West Bengal audiences, while its corporate home, ownership and base remained unchanged. Reference listings now file the channel under KTV Bangla, noting Tribe TV as its former name.
Distribution and Digital Presence
Tribe TV reached viewers through satellite and cable carriage from its launch day, beginning with regional operators such as GTPL and Siti Cable, and its free-to-air satellite signal made it accessible to dish viewers across its target states. Alongside television distribution, the channel maintained an active digital presence under the Tribe TV name, with a dedicated website, a YouTube channel carrying Santali news bulletins and special programmes, and social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Live streaming links promoted through its digital channels allowed Santali speakers outside the cable footprint, including migrant workers away from eastern India, to follow its bulletins. For a small channel serving a dispersed linguistic community, that combination of satellite, cable and online distribution was essential to assembling a viable audience.
Significance for Tribal Media in India
Whatever its later evolution, Tribe TV's launch was a landmark for representation in Indian media. Government and educational reporting on the launch highlighted it as the first satellite channel dedicated to tribal communities in their own language, and noted the plan to extend the model to languages such as Mundari and Kurukh. Scheduled Tribe communities make up a substantial share of the population of Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and parts of West Bengal and Bihar, yet their languages have historically been underserved by private broadcasting, which follows advertising markets toward larger language groups. By securing a satellite licence, a transponder presence and cable carriage for a Santali service, Kalyani Solvex demonstrated that a tribal-language channel could be built with the same technical and regulatory tools as any other Indian channel.
Legacy
Tribe TV is remembered for the ambition of its founding idea more than for the length of its Santali phase. Between 9 August 2021 and its gradual transition to Bengali programming from 2022, it proved that India's first Santali satellite channel could be launched from a district headquarters in Raiganj, win attention from state governments, and build a programme slate spanning news, culture and entertainment. Its subsequent identities, Tribe TV Bangla from 2024 and KTV Bangla from 28 September 2025, continue the broadcast operation under Kalyani Solvex and founder Krishna Kalyani, but under names that reflect a broader Bengali audience. For media historians and for Santali speakers, the original Tribe TV remains a first: the moment one of India's oldest languages, written in its own Ol Chiki script and spoken across five or more states, finally appeared as the primary voice of a satellite television channel.
