Rajdeep Dilip Sardesai is 58 years, the renowned news tv anchor, was born on 24th may 1965 and has significantly contributed to the journalism and tv news industry. He was born and brought up in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

He has presented his immense contribution on various news channels Rajdeep Times of India, India Today, NDTV, Global Broadcast News, CNN- IBN, IBN7, and IBN Lokmat. Along with being a journalist, he is also an author and an excellent orator. But unfortunately, he resigned from the work of journalism in July 2014.

Biography of Rajdeep Sardesai

One of the trendy news anchors is Rajdeep Sardesai. He has given 23 years of his life and time to the journalism industry. He is now not a part of the highly prestigious journalism industry, but his enormous contribution is remembered.

He started his career with the Times of India. Rajdeep also worked in NDTV as a managing editor. Later he shifted to the chain news channel of CNN. There he was the founder and editor. Next, he changed to India Today and simultaneously played the consulting editor and TV anchor role.

Full NameRajdeep Dilip Sardesai
ProfessionJournalist
Age 58 years
Date of Birth24 May 1965
Mother TongueHindi
NationalityIndian
Zodiac / Sun signNot known
BirthplaceAhmedabad, Gujarat
Current AddressDelhi
ReligionHindu
Personal Details of Rajdeep

Rajdeep Sardesai Age, Height, Physical Stats

A healthy body leads to fresh and promising beginnings. Along with his skills, Rajdeep is equally fit as well. He looks enthusiastic and optimistic. Age is never a concern for him. In the table below, more details about his physical stats are mentioned –

Rajdeep Sardesai Age58 years
Height in centimetres175 cm
Height in metres1.75 m
Height in feet inches5’9″
Weight74 kg
Weight in pounds163 pounds
Eye colourBlack
Hair colourBlack
Sexual OrientationStraight
Physical Stats of Rajdeep Sardesai

Also Read: India Today News Channel Anchors Name List: Male & Female With Photos 2023

Rajdeep Sardesai Family and Photos

Rajdeep Sardesai with his family
Rajdeep Sardesai with his family

Rajdeep Sardesai is a man of various cultures. His father, Mr Dilip Sardesai, belongs to Goa. His father is also one of the famous former Indian test cricketers.

His mother, Ms Nandini, is a social activist. She has been working in Mumbai. Previously she was the head of the sociology department of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. He has a sister named Shonali. His wife’s name is Sagarika Ghose.

Rajdeep has completed his schooling at Campion School and is on the ICSE board. Then he completed his intermediate degree at The Cathedral & John Connon School and was also on the ISC board. After that, he joined St. Xavier’s College to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in arts stream. He then moved to Oxford University for a Master in Arts and Bachelor of Law.

SchoolChampion school
BoardICSE
IntermediateThe Cathedral & John Connon School
GraduationSt. Xavier’s College
MastersOxford university
Degree/graduationLaw
Relationship statusMarried
Father’s nameDilip Sardesai
Mother’s nameNandini
Wife’s nameSagarika Ghose 
Family Details

Rajdeep Sardesai Salary, Net Worth

This popular figure is also earning a good amount. He is earning 5 crores per annum for his exclusive talent and vast knowledge. His net worth in dollar $5 million or net worth in Indian rupees 40 crores

Net Worth in Dollar$5 million (estimated)
Net Worth in RupeesINR 40 crores (estimated)
Rajdeep Sardesai Net Worth

Rajdeep Sardesai Married Life

In 1994 Rajdeep Sardesai was married to Sagarika Ghose. Sagarika is a journalist and author too. They have two children. One son and one daughter. His son’s name is Ishan, and his daughter’s name is Tarini. There’s not much information available regarding his family.

Rajdeep Sardesai’s Career, Awards and Shows

At the age of 26, Rajdeep entered this immensely prestigious field of journalism. He started with print media. In 1994 he came into television and became a part of it. This prominent personality was awarded the most prestigious award of Padma Shri in 2008 for his contribution to the media and journalism industry. He also worked as a host in the most popular tv show named Big Fight, which aired by NDTV.

Sardesai himself started CNN. He has also created Global Broadcast news, a collaboration of America’s CNN and TV18 by Raghav Bahl. Network 18 was the head office of CNN. When Network 18 was taken over by Reliance Industries, he and his entire team resigned from Network 18. He has been honoured with an International Broadcasters award for covering the Gujarat riot in 2002.

In 2006 he received the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in journalism award. He got his lifetime achievement award in 2020. He also got The Asian Television Award for his oratory and presentation skills. He is also the News Anchor of the Year at the Indian Television Academy. The World Economic Forum made Rajdeep the Global Leader of Tomorrow. He has been awarded some of the best awards, but still, he does his work proficiently and wholeheartedly.

Rajdeep Sardesai Social Media Profiles

Rajdeep Sardesai, along with being a topic journalist, is quite famous on social media profiles as well. He is one of the top 4 journalists with verified Twitter accounts.

Rajdeep Sardesai owns his official website as well. There he keeps posting on various news articles.

official website
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube

Rajdeep Sardesai Twitter Profile

He also has his blog channel where he keeps posting about various issues and what he thinks about them. His legs are pretty informative.

Rajdeep Sardesai Blog

Rajdeep Sardesai also has a forum for his fans where his fans can ask him various questions and get their queries solved.

Rajdeep Sardesai Instagram Profile

So it is quite evident that a person like him has so many fans and following who admire him and gain knowledge through his point of view.

Rajdeep Sardesai runs his YouTube channel as well. He has 37.2 k subscribers on YouTube.

Rajdeep Sardesai Youtube Channel

Source Youtube

Controversies

  • Rajdeep Sardesai was highly trolled for tweeting that the former president of India, Mr Pranab Mukherjee is no more. Many people call him a hypocrite over the tweets he makes. He was trolled for making two ironic tweets on Sachin Pilot. He called Sachin Pilot a “child of privilege”. Some people call him propaganda as well.
  • He tries to make a controversy of every issue. He also called cricket an urban Brahmin sport. He also said that BJP relies only on Upper caste leaders and chief ministers of Himachal Pradesh, and Gujarat is of upper caste.
  • Once, he interviewed Mr Pranab Mukherjee before Mr Mukherjee completed his sentence, spoke over him, and presented another question. This heated the former president and the public as well. After the 2014 election, when people started calling Narendra Modi “Namo” and Rahul Gandhi “Raga,” Rajdeep named his pet dog “Namo” and started comparing the Indian PM candidate to a dog. This tweet upset the people, and even his political followers condemned it.
  • He was not satisfied with the Modi govt. On several fronts, he cited the treatment of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Ministers Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah, who had been under house arrest after the dilution of Article 370. It is said that when it is a matter of conversions or secularism, he has his version and keeps making provocative tweets.
  • Rajdeep Sardesai was suspended for two weeks from airing his shows on India Today for spreading fake news. He commented that during the 26 January 2021 farmer’s tractor rally, police killed a farmer by shooting him. The police said that the farmer died in a tractor accident.
  • Later, police posted a video where the tractor overturned due to losing its balance. Then Sardesai made another contradictory statement saying that the tractor broke the police barricades. In the video, it can be seen that the allegation made by other farmers that police killed the farmer stands false.
  • He also said he appreciated the police’s role during the tractor rally. So this angered the people, and some demanded the arrest of Rajdeep Sardesai. Some said that he should be fired by India Today for reporting fake news. For this, his salary of one month was also R. He has faced humiliation from prominent figures multiple. During an interview with the star tennis player Sania Mirza, he asked her about settling down, to which Sania said that isn’t settled.
  • He kept questioning her about motherhood and settling down. Sania said that Rajdeep was being stereotypical. She added that Rajdeep seems disappointed that Sania isn’t worried about motherhood. He was also humiliated by the billionaire Mukesh Ambani.
  • Mukesh Ambani laughed off Rajdeep’s question and said he doesn’t take him seriously, which embarrassed Rajdeep Sardesai. He also debated with veteran actor Anupam Kher over Shiv Sena and Kashmir’s mass murder. Then after a lengthy debate over Twitter and TV, Rajdeep deleted his tweet and later apologized to Mr Kher for the same.
  • Some say that he appears neutral, but he is completely biased. He only makes discriminatory statements and gets brutally trolled. He keeps on making negative statements about Modi and BJP. Once when BJP lost exit poll results, he started dancing in a TV show for which he was criticised later. He has also been trolled for making negative remarks on NRIs which angered the people and they started verbally abusing him. There was a fight between the public and Rajdeep. Those people even slapped him. People call him double-faced and hypocritical.

Thoughts and Views

Rajdeep Sardesai calls himself a newsman and Mr Modi the news. He is afraid that he will face a severe credibility crisis. He agrees that he has compromised the integrity of his profession to a certain extent. He says that as one goes up the ladder in this profession, a cockroach becomes a butterfly and ends up making certain compromises, sadly.

He thinks he has made fewer mistakes than others and leaves it up to others to judge. He says that he is not Lutyens media. He moved to Delhi in 1994. When asked about his anti-Modi views, he says that the right to dissent does not make him anti-national. The right to dissent doesn’t make him presstitute. Journalists should be journalists and not activists or embedded.

He further adds that as a journalist, it is essential to show the mirror to the politicians and to be able to say it like it is. And that’s what he is trying to do. And if that leaves him vulnerable to the charge of being anti-Modi or pro-Modi, it’s unfortunate, but he is willing to live with it now. He has no problems, he can live with that, and his conscience is clean. Journalism has to be anti-establishment at one level.

Unfortunately, the relationship between the politicians and the media has changed, which cuts across all parties and all individuals. When asked about Lalu Prasad Yadav, he said that he had resisted the temptation over the years to exoticise. He shows Lalu his strengths and his weaknesses.

Lalu sparked a great political revolution in Bihar but was also responsible for the complete corruption of institutions in a caste-ridden polity in that same state. He thinks that Lalu allowed a particular corruption of the system and the rise of the family raj in Bihar. He has covered both the news, and it is not an exoticisation of Lalu. A journalist sometimes likes to see the underdog win.

When Rajdeep first met Lalu, he was the underdog and was stunning to Rajdeep. But when Lalu became the top dog, he became less attractive to Rajdeep. For Rajdeep, Bal Thackeray is just as interesting as Jyoti Basu would. Both left and right. He has had a beer with both Bal Thackeray and Jyoti Basu. He is an obsessive election junkie. His two great passions are cricket and election. He loves elections, and he takes them seriously. He takes psephology seriously. The best thing on counting day is to watch someone who says, “I’m going to win by a huge majority”, actually lose. For Rajdeep, congress is a bit like a family firm and the Modi – Shah juggernaut is a “new India” enterprise. They are hungry, and there’s a fire in the belly.

Rajdeep’s Journey to Journalism

Upon being asked about his pivotal turning points, he mentioned that becoming a journalist was a crucial point. During a year off from law, journalism became his year off. He went to the Times of India, and at that time, he used to write a bit, which was a pivotal moment. Otherwise, he would have been a lawyer in a black coat wandering around Bombay high court as that is what he was trained to do. He was not prepared to be a journalist.

In 1994 he had another pivotal moment in his life, and by that time, he had completed six years in print media. In 1994 he came to Delhi to set up The Telegraph newspaper, but that didn’t happen, and he met Prannoy Roy; he said that he was planning to set up a news program on TV, and the next thing he knew was that he was on television. He thought he would do it for a year but has been doing it for 21 years.

His third pivotal moment was when he left NDTV and set up CNN – IBN again, doing something new. Every ten years, he tries to reinvent himself. He even wrote a book again ten years later. He thinks that pivotal moments come at times when one is looking to do something new and take up a new challenge. The first choice one can make a career. His friends who studied with him in the chambers of Crawford Bayley from 1988 – 1989 are multi-billionaires as they are top customs lawyers.

He started his career as a print journalist and got a salary of Rs. 1,500. But today, as a television anchor, he is getting paid much more. So for him, it’s just the turns life takes and takes people into a completely different trajectory. What one does once they are in a profession becomes a landmark in the profession, but they don’t turn their lives in the manner in which career decisions do.

One of the significant learnings he got in his life was when he started as a print journalist in Bombay, the city he knew very well. So it was easier for him to cover political parties like Shiv Sena and Mumbai politics because it was an arena he was familiar with. His life’s significant change was when he moved from Bombay to Delhi. He came to Delhi and hated the city. He was from a town where there was power 24X7, but in Delhi, there were power blackouts.

He went from a city where he had his friends, college friends, and new people, and he came to a city where everyone became a contact. In his city, he understood politics, but in North India, he could not understand politics. He was in a completely different environment and out of his comfort zone, making him work harder. He takes pride in the fact that his Hindi is good.

Once a person breaks out of his comfort zone in life, you are faced with new challenges, and he thinks it is one of the significant challenges of working in a completely different political environment. In Delhi, everyone tries to bring everyone down, and he was just an observer and watching it. He has always remained an observer. As a journalist, one has to meet politicians, and he enjoys interacting with politicians.

One gets new experiences every day. If one is willing to learn, there is curiosity which is the best thing a journalist can have. A journalist doesn’t need to be a PhD; a journalist needs to have a curious mind and an enquiring mind. Having an enquiring sense matters far more than being a PhD.

One doesn’t need to have a PhD in politics; one needs to be interested in politics. Every day in journalism is a new day; you learn something new. He was not good at live anchoring, he was not a natural live anchor in a studio, and he was happy with the fieldwork. One bug learning in his life was how do you become a better anchor and how one becomes more confident in live programming.

The 1998 general election was a turning point because that was the first time Rajdeep was in the studio with Prannoy Roy and others doing live election programming. It was the first election that private television was doing. He prepared for six days as it was a huge opportunity; by the end, he knew every constituency. He made himself a master at every constituency to feel more confident in the TV. By 1998 his stage fear was gone. For Rajdeep, covering the 1992 – 1993 Mumbai riots was a difficult period. It was a traumatic experience from a personal point of view. His proudest moment was setting up CNN – IBN and successfully running it. TV journalism is a team game. It is not about a particular individual but about how good the team is. Stories only give momentary satisfaction; one remains satisfied for a single moment.

Rajdeep Sardesai on Indian Media

According to Sardesai, India suffers from lingering credibility and potentially permanently damaging crises. Many of the challenges faced by the Indian media did not begin in May 2014 after the advent of Narendra Modi as prime minister. Noise has replaced news, and sensation is replaced by sense and has been building up for over a decade and even longer.

Like society, newsrooms are also getting divided. When ministers fall as news traders, presstitutes, and anti-national, those divisions and cleavages widen to the extent that today journalists and news organizations are aligning themselves with comforts rather than questioning those in power and the government. Themselves do not want to open themselves up to serious scrutiny. As the quantity of news channels increases, the quality decreases. There was much quality work 10 -15 years ago. Competition should raise the bar, but strangely Television competition is declining in quality. Competition has brought journalism down to the lowest common denominator. Revolutions tend to devour their own, and that’s what is happening in India. The television revolution is now dangerously devouring some people who started it.

Rajdeep’s Views of Youngsters and Journalism

Better journalism colleges are needed in India. It’s not about a degree. The best degree in journalism is life. One learns much more things in the newsroom than one will ever learn in a classroom. Seniors also need to mentor youngsters, but seniors are obsessed with themselves in India. They are building their personas and don’t have time to make young people.

Everyone is so caught up in their little cubby holes they don’t do enough to encourage talents. If seniors don’t, everyone will head towards a crisis because the next generation is just not being given the opportunity. Digital media is an opportunity for budding journalists. The profession of journalism is about the opportunity. Digital media is also not very costly as the business model doesn’t need to put an investment that TV requires, so young talents can be encouraged to follow their passion for journalism.

As the media has become competitive, people want quality content, and quality content will survive in the digital age. Television is getting commodified because everyone is doing the same thing and chasing the same audience. In digital, youngsters have to create new audiences for a new India, forcing them to think out of the box. All the innovations that are coming in for digital are from young minds. Digital will spur the same innovative, passionate mindset that TV did 20 years ago.

Any type of media doesn’t take over another kind of media. Each medium supplements the other, and there are complementarities one media can build. If digital grows, television must adjust to the digital age. Every television platform needs a solid digital back end, and some digital platforms need a digital front end.

The news delivery system may vary, but the content will remain king. So it doesn’t matter in which type of media a person puts the content. There is always a demand for content, but the delivery systems of the content may change when people go for handheld devices for news and information.

Everything will coexist. Nothing will replace the other. News should be a set of information for the new generation. Rajdeep greatly admires India’s youngster’s energy level and ambition. They are far more ambitious than he was. To be a good journalist, one has to be passionate about journalism and have some kind of innovative and creative impulses. One just can’t get into television to become famous.

Journalism should be about commitment to news gathering and a feeling of passion for news. If the youngsters have that combined with their energy and ambition, they can conquer the world because digital will provide them with enormous opportunities. He is hopeful for Today’s generation because there are ample opportunities, but they need a little patience and passion for news. One has to see life as a journey that possesses both highs and lows where one learns from lows and takes highs with a sense of gratification but without getting carried away.

Success and failure are both imposters. Every stage of life prepares us for the next. He says to the young journalists that journalism is neither a one-day match nor life. One has to stick to it and be willing to take the highs and lows. Journalism is an excellent profession because no two days are the same. Youngsters should not allow curiosity to leave them. He wants every young person to chase their dreams and be comfortable with what they are doing, not imitate someone around them and be forced into something they don’t want to do. Everyone should be what they are.

Some Facts About Rajdeep Sardesai

  • Rajdeep is a writer.
  • Rajdeep has authored 2 books named The Election that Changed India and another named How Modi Won India.
  • Rajdeep’s books have been transcribed to Hindi as well.
  • Rajdeep wrote a book after resigning from CNN – IBN.
  • He is a cricket enthusiast.
  • He never smokes.
  • He has completed his studies from abroad.
  • Rajdeep doesn’t have any role model.
  • Rajdeep had a great bonding with RK Laxman.
  • He appreciates Prannoy Roy a lot.
  • Rajdeep’s powerful Hindi orator.
  • He met Nelson Mandela in 1991 while covering a cricket tour of South Africa.
  • Rajdeep’s most difficult decision was to leave CNN – IBN.
  • He aspires to write a film script.
  • Rajdeep loves to work with young people.
  • His father is a cricketer and has played for the Indian cricket team.
  • Rajdeep doesn’t want his children to be journalists.
  • Rajdeep is an outstanding columnist.
  • Rajdeep’s son is a doctor, and his daughter is a law student.

FAQs