Govindraj Ethiraj, Founder: He is a television & print journalist and also Founder of Boom News, a next generation television news initiative. He also anchors seasonal shows on Indian news television – the current one being the weekly `Policy Watch’ on public service broadcaster Rajya Sabha or RS TV. And most recent being BottomLine on Headlines Today – and writes for newspapers like Business Standard.
Previously, he was Founder-Editor in Chief of Bloomberg TV India, a 24-hours business news service launched out of Mumbai in 2008 and a partnership between Bloomberg LLP and the UTV Group in India. Prior to setting up Bloomberg TV India, he worked with Business Standard newspaper as Editor (New Media) with a specific mandate of integrating the newspaper’s news operations with its digital or web platform. He also spent around five years each with CNBC-TV18 & The Economic Times. He is a Fellow of The Aspen Institute, Colorado & a winner of the BMW Foundation Responsible Leadership Awards for 2014.
Email: govindraj@indiaspend.org
Samar Halarnkar, Editor: A journalist for 24 years working at publications like the Indian Express and India Today. His last assignment was Managing Editor of Hindustan Times, where he revamped the nationwide flow of news to focus on issues of public interest and ran groundbreaking investigations into poverty related multibillion-dollar subsidy programmes and administrative reform.
He continues as a columnist with Hindustan Times and Mint, writing on social and economic issues, science and technology. Most recently, he was a fellow with the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, where he drew up a blueprint for mobile-phone-based, public-interest journalism model for India. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
Halarnkar is the author of two books, “Nirvana under the rain tree”, an early chronicle of India’s Internet Revolution, and “A married man’s guide to creative cooking (and other dubious adventures)”, his experiments with cooking, which flowed out of a popular cooking column that he continues to write. He is married with a four-year-old daughter and lives in Bangalore.
Email: samar@indiaspend.org
Jyothi Shankaran, Associate Editor: His last role was as Senior Editor with the business news channel Bloomberg TV India. He also worked as News Editor at business-standard.com, the online version of the business newspaper Business Standard. Jyothi graduated as a chemical engineer from Regional Engineering College, Srinagar.
Email: jyothi@indiaspend.org
Alison Saldanha, Assistant Editor: Alison was a correspondent with the Indian Express as a city reporter primarily covering the municipal corporation and the other governing agencies, with regular reports on courts and crime. She has worked with urban-sector non-profits Janaagraha (in Bangalore) and the Urban Design Research Institute (in Mumbai). She is a post-graduate of the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, and a graduate of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai.
Email: alison@indiaspend.org
Karthik Madhavapeddi, Sub-Editor: Karthik is a Mechanical Engineer from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), Hyderabad (2010). His last stint was at SaddaHaq, a social-journalism platform based in Hyderabad. Before that, he was a plant and machinery manager at Larsen & Toubro Construction. Apart from fixating on numbers and grammar, Karthik reads books, enjoys poetry and is a newshound.
Email: karthik@indiaspend.org
Mukta Patil, Policy Analyst: A Masters in Media and Cultural Studies from the Tata Institute Social Sciences, Mukta has previously interned at Down to Earth in Delhi, and Film Heritage Foundation in Mumbai. She has worked as an assistant editor at the Other India Press in Goa, and has a Diploma in Liberal Arts as well as International Relations. She is keenly interested in stories related to energy, environment, policy, and the meeting of the three.
Email: mukta@indiaspend.org
Prachi Salve, Policy Analyst/Writer: Prachi has two Masters degrees. The first one was in Economics from Mumbai University and the second one was in Development Studies from the University of Sussex, UK. Prachi has done her Bachelors in Economics from St Xaviers College in Mumbai. She has been a research assistant at Institute of Development Studies (UK) and the Young Foundation (UK). Prachi has also worked for Greenpeace India in the fundraising division.
Email: prachi@indiaspend.org
Shreya Shah, Writer/Editor: Shreya covers education at IndiaSpend. She is a graduate of the Global Human Development programme at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. She has previously worked with the Mumbai bureau of The Wall Street Journal, where she researched for a series on drug resistant tuberculosis and wrote on a number of topics, ranging from reservation for women in Indian politics to the black and yellow taxis plying the city’s roads. She has also worked in education and early childhood development with organisations in Washington D.C., India and Jordan.
Email: shreya@indiaspend.org
Swagata Yadavar, Principal Correspondent: Swagata is a health journalist based in Mumbai. She is passionate about uncovering the gaps in access to healthcare and writing about public health policies.She has won Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award for Health writing in 2014 and Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2013. She was previously working in the national magazine, THE WEEK.
Email: swagata@indiaspend.org
