Sony Pictures Television’s India unit Multi Screen Media and BBC Worldwide have partnered to launch Sony BBC Earth. The new premium factual channel is a first for BBC Worldwide in launching a co-branded channel with a local partner. The channel will broadcast in HD and will be available in Tamil, English and Hindi across India.

BBC Worldwide has been rebuilding its India presence after it pulled the plug on two of its channels here, BBC Entertainment and kids channel CBeebies, in 2012 after five years of operations, citing “challenging” economics for channel operators. Since then, BBCW has been licensing some of its content via various output deals.

BBC Earth is a brand used by BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the public service broadcaster, to market and distribute the BBC’s natural history content to countries other than the U.K. BBC Earth has distributed titles such as Frozen Planet, Life, Blue Planet, and Planet Earth while its theatrical film unit has produced titles such as One Life (2011), Walking with Dinosaurs (2013) and Enchanted Kingdom (2014).