Vir Sanghvi is the best-known Indian journalist of his generation. His career straddles print, television, books and now, new media.
Vir Sanghvi was born in London in 1956 and educated at Mayo College, Ajmer and Mill Hill School, London. He won an Open Scholarship to read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Brasenose College, Oxford.
In 1978, when he was 22, he was appointed editor of Bombay magazine,making him the youngest editor in the history of Indian journalism. In1983, he presided over the re-launch of the monthly features magazine Imprint and in 1986, when he was 30, he became editor of Sunday, the newsmagazine published by the ABP group. Under Sanghvi’s editorship Sunday became India’s largest-selling English-language newsmagazine.Later, Sanghvi became Consulting Editor of the ABP group, the leading publishers of newspapers and magazines in Eastern India.
In 1999, he was appointed Editor of the Hindustan Times, the largest-selling English-language newspaper in Delhi and North India.In 2003, he stepped down as Editor but continued as Editorial Director till 2007.
During Sanghvi’s time, the Hindustan Times became a multi-edition newspaper opening new editions in Chandigarh, Calcutta, Bhopal, Ranchi, and most successfully in Bombay where it is now the second largest-selling newspaper.
In 2007, Sanghvi switched to an advisory role with HT Media, the company that publishes the Hindustan Times and the financial daily Mint. He continues to be a regular columnist for the Hindustan Times and an occasional columnist for Mint.
Sanghvi has also run a parallel TV career which began while he was still editor of Sunday. He anchored Question Time for Doordarshan, the state run broadcaster and then Round Table for DD-CNN, a collaboration between Doordarshan and CNN. In 1997, he switched to the Star Network where he has anchored many shows across channels, among them A Question of Answers, Star Talk, Veer Ke Teer, and Cover Story.His most recent show Achiever’s Club aired on Star World in 2011/12.
He has also anchored shows on the NDTV network, including Face The Music, and One On One on NDTV 24×7 and Custom Made for Vir Sanghvi on NDTV Good Times. His most recent appearance on NDTV was as a judge on the India-Pakistan food competition Foodistan in 2012.
Among Sanghvi’s other shows are A Matter of Taste and Vir Sanghvi’s Asian Diary on Discovery Travel and Living and Tycoons and On The Record on CNBC.
Sanghvi’s books include Men of Steel (published by Roli Books), one of the biggest paperback bestsellers in the history of Indian publishing which has been translated into 8 Indian languages. His other books are Rude Food and Madharvaro Scindia, a biography (Penguin) and India – Then and Now (Roli).
Vir Sanghvi has won many awards during his career for both TV and print including the Rajiv Gandhi Award, the Lokmanya Tilak Award, the Cointreau Award for Best Food Literature Book in the world for Rude Food) and innumerable TV prizes. In 1993, he was declared A Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum at Davos.
He has been a member of many professional, academic and government bodies including the National Integration Council. Currently, he is a member of the Broadcast Content Complaint Council (BCCC), a body that regulates content on entertainment TV channels.
