He is the author of three memoirs of journalism, Stringer, Bad News and Breakup, and has been called "one of the great reporters of our age" by the BBC special correspondent Fergal Keane.

After enrolling in the electrical engineering program at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, he moved to the United States and graduated from Yale University in 2005.

Sundaram earned a master's degree in mathematics as an undergraduate at Yale, studying abstract algebra under celebrated mathematician and activist Serge Lang.

[2] He then turned down a job as a mathematician at Goldman Sachs, and began to write, reporting as a stringer for The New York Times and The Associated Press from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

[6][7] Stringer was published by Sonny Mehta, the legendary editor of Kapuściński, Naipaul and several Nobel laureates, and was featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, who called the book "remarkable".

[15] The Guardian called it "an important book that should shatter any lingering faith people might hold in Kagame's hideous regime" and the Washington Post described it as "courageous and heartfelt.

"[23] In 2015, a jury of journalists including Jon Lee Anderson and Carlotta Gall awarded Sundaram the annual Frontline Club prize for his war reporting from the Central African Republic, calling his story A Place on Earth "an excellent, highly original piece of reportage and writing, reminiscent of Ryzard Kapuściński and V.S.

[25] Sundaram hosted a four-part television series called Coded World in 2019,[26] which explores how algorithms and artificial intelligence are changing humans.