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Ridhika roy

A media titan in her native India, Radhika Roy is a former speech pathologist who pursued her

dream of becoming a journalist and transformed a garage-startup production company into an

internationally renowned news operation comprising three channels and over 1,000 employees.

Widely recognized for her uncompromising devotion to journalistic and business ethics, Roy

cofounder, co-owner, and managing director of New Delhi Television (NDTV)has

consistently demonstrated that empires can be built without sacrificing principles. Together with

her husband, Prannoy, she has galvanized Indian television, with such accomplishments as

breaking the governments hold on television news by founding the countrys first privately

owned news channel. After persistent lobbying for airtime on the states public television

broadcaster, Doordarshan, NDTV busted through with The World This Week, a weekly

international news program produced by Radhika Roy. A combination of hard work, a strong

product, and fortuitous timing helped the Roys build brand awareness, as the program covered

such seminal international events as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the conflict in Chinas

Tiananmen Square. NDTVs success attracted the attention of the Tata Group, one of Indias

oldest and largest business conglomerates, which signed on to sponsor a daily news bulletin

calledNews Tonight, making Roy the producer of Indias first privately produced nightly news

show. In 2003, Roy launched NDTV24x7 (English language) and NDTV India (Hindi channel)

to retain editorial control over the news they were producing. She espouses a bold business

philosophy based on being unafraid to take chances, and has backed that up by repeatedly

tackling the establishment: Weve taken risks, gone against the norm, and broken new ground.

Born on July 7, 1949, Roy was raised in an upper-middle-class family. (Her older sister, Brinda

Karat, was the first woman politburo member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist.) Her

father, Suraj Lal, had moved to Calcutta looking for a job and joined the port commissionersoffice, later moving onto jobs in the corporate sector. Roy attended the Wellams Girls School in

Dehra Dun from 1960 to 1964, and later Miranda House in New Delhi from 1965 to 1968. She

also attended the Jadavpur University, an elite research institution, in 1969 and completed an

advanced course in speech pathology from 1969 to 1975 at the Oldrey Fleming School in

London. It was in London that she met her future husband and NDTV cofounder, Prannoy Roy.

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Until 1978, Roy had been working at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences as a speech

pathologist when she decided that she was set on a career in journalism, heart and mind. She

took a job with theIndian Express newspaper as a subeditor from 1978 to 1983, then moved to

the news magazineIndia Today, where she remained until 1987 as a news coordinator. Today

Roy regards her experience as a print journalist as her formative years, playing a key role in the

development of her professional ethics and integrity, characteristics for which she is widely

applauded.

In 1988, Roy and her husband started New Delhi Television as a news production company with

two journalists, three producers, and one finance person. It was a lean, mean, Indian team, her

husband has joked about the company, a garage startup. Having established itself at home,

NDTV next attracted overseas attention from the United Kingdoms BBC and Rupert Murdochs

Hong Kongbased Satellite Television for the Asian Region, or STAR TV, both looking for

content providers upon their expansions into India. In 1998 Radhika Roy became the producer of

Indias first-ever all-day news channel when NDTV signed a five-year contract to produce all of

the programming for Murdochs STAR News channel. NDTV produced all of STAR Newss

content from 1998 to 2003. However, in 2003, Roy demonstrated why she is highly regarded for

her journalistic ethics when she placed principle over money and refused STARs offer of a

contract extension only if NDTV ceded editorial control of the news. Editorial independence is

what drives us, Roy said. Parting with it was an intolerable idea. Instead, she opted to set up

her own news channels, and both NDTV 24x7 (the English-language channel) and NDTV India

(the Hindi version) debuted in April of that year. Their success has been staggering: in just four

years, they together have become Indias leading news networks in reach and viewers. They can

be seen across India, the Middle East, Europe, and South Africa. NDTV Profit, a business news

channel, was launched in January 2005 and can be seen in the same markets. To run the three

twenty-four-hour channels, NDTV now has a staff of 1,200 people.

Throughout her career, Roy has proved that success need not come at the expense of integrity.

For example, she once put an anchor back on the air after an accident distorted his face, against

the wishes of her STAR News bosses, saying he needed to regain his self-confidence. Another

time, she refused to pay a bribe to get a transformer fixed, a task that ultimately took nine months

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through the official procedure. Roys generosity extends to her employees, who receive excellent

benefits, such as six months paid maternity leave and two weeks paternity leave. Roy has her

finger in every piethere is nothing that she does not personally supervise within the set up,

said one NDTV executive. It is said that in 2003, when NDTV first launched its two new

channels, Roy personally worked out all of the details, including content, program scheduling,

set design, and even the on-air feel of the production. The red dot in the NDTV logo, designed to

resemble the bindicommonly worn by Indian women on their foreheads, was Roys idea, as was

the sound design for NDTV. Roy chose the music because it pulsated with energywas

uplifting, urgent, impressive and welcomingall things our news is. The tabla, an Indian drum,

which can be heard before every newscast, is another of Roys contributions.

Notoriously media-shy, Roy prefers to pass the credit on to others; legend has it that she is so

intent on staying out of the limelight that she even refused to be photographed for the companys

internal records.

From media aspirant to media titan, Roy has asserted herself as a fiercely independent

professional with strong journalistic ethics. Along with being named an entrepreneur of the year

in 2003 by Ernst & Young, she has been a regular onIndia Todays list of Fifty Power People

from 2004 to 2006 and was named one of the 25 most powerful women in Indian business

byBusiness Today in 2006. She has revolutionized Indian television and, in NDTV, has built a

legacy not only for herself, but also for integrity in journalism all throughout the world.