Rajdeep Sardesai is a renowned news reader and author in India. He is the consulting editor at the India Today news group. Rajdeep was also the chief editor of IBN18 Network. This group includes IBN7, IBN Lokmat and CNN-IBN. He resigned from this post in July 2014.
Table of Contents
Early life
The father of Rajdeep Sardesai is Dileep Sardesai, a well-known ex-Indian test cricketer.
Education
Rajdeep did his schooling from the Campion School in Mumbai. He completed his matriculation from The Cathedral & John Connon School, Mumbai. Rajdeep completed his graduation in Economics from St.Xavier’s College. After completion of his graduation, he went to the University College Oxford to get degrees pertaining to Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Civil Law and Master of Arts. While studying at the Oxford University he played cricket and became the member of Indian cricket team in the year 1987 against the Pakistan touring team.
Career in News and Journalism
Rajdeep Sardeep has worked as a journalist in The Times of India for a period of six years. He was the city editor in the Mumbai edition. He entered the field of television journalism in the year 1994 in the form of a political editor of New Delhi Television (NDTV).
He worked as the managing editor of NDTV India and NDTV 24X7 and held the responsibility of overseeing the news content, format and programming for both the channels.
Rajdeep became the host of the popular TV show like “The Big Fight” at NDTV. After some time, he left NDTV and floated his own company ‘Global Broadcast News’ in partnership with the American giant CNN and TV18. The latter (TV18) and Turner International India joined together to form CNN-IBN in 2005, and Rajdeep Sardesai was made the Editor-in-Chief.
Mr. Sardesai bought 46 percent stake of channel 7 that was renamed as IBN7. He has also been the president of the Editors Guild of India. Sardesai was the only TV journalism professional to grace this post and was chosen as a global leader for the World Economic Forum in the year 2000. He resigned from Network18 on July 4, 2014 with an open letter to the media, citing that he wanted to move on but it was really special to share nine years with IBN Network. In the letter, Mr. Sardesi reminisced the time, when they had no chance in hell and all they had, was just a chair and table, and a fire in their belly to give ‘khabar har keemat par’ (news no matter what the obstacles).
Rajdeep Desai’s book ‘The Elections that Changed India‘ is an interesting account on how the 2014 Election changed the political landscape in India.
Rajdeep Sardesai – Wife and Children
Sardesai got married to Sagarika Ghose who was an Indian author, news anchor and a renowned journalist. She had been journalist since year 1991 and worked at The Times of India, The Indian Express and the Outlook Magazine. They have two children, Ishan (son) and Tarini (daughter).
Rajdeep Sardesai – Net worth
As Rajdeep Sardesai is an editor-in-chief, his pay structure includes salary, perks, company stock value and performance based pay (reviewed annually). TV channels earn through advertising (60 percent) and subscription revenue (40 percent). His monthly package is close to Rs.80 lakhs and his net worth is about Rs. 10 crores.
Awards
Rajdeep Sardesai has won many kinds of awards related to the field of journalism. He got the prestigious Padamshree for journalism in the year 2008. The international broad casters award for covering the incidents that took place during riots of Gujarat was given to Rajdeep Sardesai.
