KISHWAR DESAI

Over the past 30 years, Kishwar Desai has turned her hand to almost every job in the media industry. She got her first break as reporter with the Indian Express in Chandigarh in the late seventies. But only a few years later she was producing documentaries and working as a special correspondent for a foreign affairs programme on NDTV, one of India’s most prestigious production houses.

These days, she’s writing a history of Indian cinema and also having a stab at screenwriting. During her career in television, Desai made great strides in multi-lingual programming. She launched one of the first independent production houses to break away from traditional English TV, embracing Hindustani and reaching out to large swathes of viewers who were being left out of mainstream programming.

She has also successfully merged the two disciplines: creative and businesswoman, becoming CEO of two Pujabi channels and writing an award-winning play about the life Saadat Hasan Manto, leading to a resurgence of interest in the great story-teller.

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