Ravish Kumar – The popular TV news anchor of NDTV India

Ravish Kumar is an Indian journalist and celebrity TV anchor, who currently serves as a senior executive editor at NDTV India, a leading Hindi news channel. He is mostly associated with politics and his monologues at the Prime Time for the news channel make him one of the celebrated TV news anchors at present. A recipient of Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award twice, best journalist of the year award by Mumbai Press Club 2016 and prestigious Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Award for Hindi Journalism and Creative Literature in 2010, he is also an author and popular blogger, and a star TV host of controversies too.

Ravish Kumar hails from Motihari of East Champaran district in Bihar, and was born in the year 1974. Jitvarpur is his village. For higher studies he moved to Delhi where he took post-graduate diploma in Journalism from Indian Institute of Mass Communication. His professional career began in 1996 soon after he completed his journalism degree. He has more than 2 decades of relationship with NDTV India since he joined the TV channel in 1996. He is a star anchor of  NDTV India – leading Hindi news channel at present. Some of his popular TV shows include – Ravish Ki Report, Prime Time, Hum Log etc.

Ravish Kumar – Some interesting and unknown facts

1. His wife Nayana Dasgupta is a history lecturer at Lady Shri Ram College. They met at Delhi University while Ravish Kumar pursuing M. Phil and they dated for 7 years before getting married against his parents’ wishes. The couple has two daughters.

2. He has published four books including The Free Voice: On Democracy, Culture and the Nation.

3. His name was included in the list of 100 most influential Indians by The Indian Express in 2016.

4. He is the first recipient of Kuldip Nayyar Journalism Award in the year 2017.

5. He completed bachelor’s and master’s degree in history from Deshbandhu College, Delhi. He was mentored by his lecturers – Anil Sethi and Rana Bahal while studying there.

6. Apart from reading and writing, listening to old Hindi songs is one of his favourite hobbies.

7. His brother Brajesh Kumar Pandey, a local Congress politician was booked under POSCO. He was allegedly involved with a sex racket, and Ravish too was criticized for not covering the issue in his news shows.

8. His open criticisms of TV anchor Arnab Goswami and issues with Narendra Modi have also kept him in limelight several times. He once claimed that he receives death threats and abusive phone calls since NDA came into power in 2014.

9. He has been a victim of online trolls several times, and for the same reason he quit Twitter in 2015.  

10. Born and completed his early education in a remote village of Bihar, he couldn’t even speak English when he reached Delhi for the first time for his higher studies and he was also scared with those who communicate in English.

11. Before coming to Delhi for the first time, he visited only a few cities till then.

12. Even after completing his graduation he was not proficient in English. While doing his post-graduation, he was influenced by his history professor Parthasarathi Gupta, who changed his perspectives. It was a life changing moment too.

13. He is a popular blogger known for his satire works and deals with countless themes and topics.

14. He writes micro-fiction stories in his own unique style and calls it as ‘Laprek’ which means Laghu Prem Katha. Ishq Mein Sheher Hona is a compilation work of his Lapreks.

15. He won Magsaysay Award for Journalism in August 2019.