Radhika Roy (née Das; born 7 May 1949) is an Indian journalist who is the founder and former executive co-chairperson of NDTV.
Roy began her career in journalism at The Indian Express and worked for a period of time at the India Today magazine before becoming the founder of NDTV.
Radhika was born in Calcutta, West Bengal on 7 May 1949,[1] at 5/1B Belvedre Road to Sooraj Lal Dass, who had migrated to the city during the partition of India.
[3][2] Radhika and Prannoy moved to London, United Kingdom for higher education, where they got married and then returned to India, settling down in Delhi.
Roy quit her job at the magazine to join The New School For Social Research for a post-graduate degree in broadcast journalism in New York, United States.
[14] Radhika had instituted a legally binding code of conducts for journalistic ethics in the company at a time when other broadcasters had none.
[15] She has also been described as having a sense of social justice and integrity,[6] Roy had implemented measures such as arrangement of sanitary napkins in NDTV offices during a time when the debate over destigmatisation of periods in workplaces had not yet enter public discourse.
[6] The company began facing government pressure through litigations and intimidation of advertisers on the network after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, which was described as part of a process of cratering media freedom in the country.
[20] The government attempted to ban the Hindi news channel NDTV India in 2016 and retracted following widespread protests.
[21][22] In 2017, the offices of the company and the residence of the Roys were raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) after a NDTV news presenter had questioned statements made by a ruling party spokesperson.
[30] Doubts had also begun emerging by 2015 over how much control the Roys had over their company after it had become involved in a debt agreement with the billionaire Mukesh Ambani's conglomerate Reliance Industries following a series of loan transactions necessitated by the NDTV's downturn due to the Great Recession.