Profile: Sudeep Chakravarti, author

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Sudeep Chakravarti began his career in journalism in 1985 at the South Asia bureau of Asian Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company. In 1988, he moved to Sunday magazine, then the second largest newsweekly in India, published by Kolkata-based Ananda Bazar Patrika Group, where he was Business Editor.

Read interview with Sudeep Chakravarti: 'Maoists have the power to implode India' | Buy a copy of Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country

He joined India Today as Business Editor in 1991, in time to witness the kick-start to India’s economic liberalisation. Until he left in end-2002 he held a variety of positions with India Today Group, progressively as Business Editor, Senior Editor, Deputy Editor, and Executive Editor in a multi-tasking role that encompassed print, the Internet, television, and the Group’s then-nascent books division. He was also Director of the India Today Conclave, a global platform for dialogue that he blueprinted and established.

After briefly consulting for the private sector, he joined Hindustan Times as Consultant Editor in mid-2003. Here, he was part of the Group’s think-tank. He acted as a bridge between the CEO and Chairperson’s offices, and editorial, marketing and advertising departments.

He blueprinted various editorial and marketing initiatives that continue to be pursued. He was also Director of the Hindustan Times Leadership Initiative, a regional thought-platform he conceptualised and helped bring to fruition.

In late 2004 Sudeep relocated to Goa from Delhi on an open-ended sabbatical, to pursue interests in research and writing. Penguin published his critically acclaimed best-selling first novel, Tin Fish, in 2005.

Penguin/Viking has in January 2008 published Red Sun, a book of narrative non-fiction on India’s armed Maoists, a travelogue through revolutionary India. Penguin will next publish his second novel, Once Upon a Time in Aparanta, set in the churn of present-day Goa.

Meanwhile, Sudeep is Visiting Faculty at the Manipal Institute of Communications, University of Manipal, where he is Member, Board of Studies. Sudeep is also Editor-at-large for Rolling Stone magazine in India.

Sudeep has published several hundred articles, interviews, essays and columns in media organisations where he has worked. He has traveled widely in India and overseas, and has covered as writer and editor business, trade, politics, foreign affairs, security issues, technology, music, travel, natural disasters, and stories of human intserest. He has also published elsewhere, including Strategic Intelligence, Merian, Akzente, Die Zeit, rediff.com, Man’s World, The Outlook Group of Publications, The SAPRA Bulletin and MINT.

He has edited numerous special volumes (among them, a three-volume Millennium Series for India Today) and a book, The Other India (Books Today, 2000), and co-edited The India Today Book of Cartoons (Books Today, 2000), and The Peace Dividend: Progress for India and South Asia (Lotus Roli, 2004).

Sudeep is a Professional Member of the World Future Society, a Washington D.C.-based organisation of futurists. He was earlier invited to the Club of Asia by Strategic Intelligence; and in 2004, to the Indo-German Young Leaders Forum by the BMW-Herbert Quandt Foundation.

He attended Mayo College, Ajmer, Rajasthan, and St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, where he obtained an Honours degree in History.

Read interview with Sudeep Chakravarti: 'Maoists have the power to implode India' | Buy a copy of Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country

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