The chairman of the diversified Aditya Birla group, Kumar Mangalam Birla, has bought a 25 per cent stake in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp-owned Indian news channel, Star India said.

"He has acquired the stake in the news channel in his personal capacity," a Star India spokesman said, declining to reveal the purchase price.

The Star group restructured the shareholding of its Indian news channel so that the foreign holding was limited to 26 per cent of equity capital, with the rest owned by resident Indians, as required by government rules to allow the channel to be uplinked from India.

The Aditya Birla group, India's third-largest industrial conglomerate, with revenue of over $6 billion, has interests spanning cement, chemicals, metals, fibres and more recently, telecoms and software services.

On Friday, it announced it would buy out privately-held TransWorks, one of the smaller players in India's crowded back-office services industry, raising its exposure to the new economy sector.

Group firm Indian Rayon and Industries would buy the firm for about $13 million, it said in a statement.

TransWorks, 80-per cent owned by venture capital firm ChrysCapital, has about 1,000 employees and a revenue rate of about $1.0 million per month.

Indian Rayon's chief interests are in viscose filament yarn and garments, but it also has a majority stake in the group's software services arm PSI Data Systems.