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 called News 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 commissioners office, 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.

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 the Indian Express newspaper as a subeditor from 1978 to 1983, then moved to the news magazine India 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

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 bindi commonly 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 on India Todays list of Fifty Power People from 2004 to 2006 and was named one of the 25 most powerful women in Indian business by Business 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.