Ravish Kumar joined NDTV in 1994 and spent 28 years with the network, eventually becoming Senior Executive Editor of NDTV India. He hosted several of the channel's best-known programmes:
His reporting focused on ordinary people's concerns, such as jobs, education and rural life. During the 2014 general election, he travelled widely across North India to report on rural and small-town voters. He also became known for long series on unemployment and the state of universities on Prime Time.
Ravish Kumar popularised the term "Godi media" for news outlets that critics see as uncritically supportive of the government, and "WhatsApp University" for misinformation spread through WhatsApp forwards. Both phrases are now widely used in Indian political debate.
In 2022, the Adani Group acquired control of NDTV, raising concerns about press freedom in India. Ravish Kumar resigned on 30 November 2022, a day after the channel's founders stepped down from the holding company's board. In a video after his resignation, he said that someone had taken away "the bird's nest".
Immediately after leaving NDTV, he launched his own YouTube channel, Ravish Kumar Official, where he publishes long-form news analysis in Hindi. The channel crossed 10 million subscribers on 5 May 2024, about 18 months after launch, and has since grown to around 15 million. He also runs English and Shorts channels. The Reuters Institute and Rest of World have cited him as a leading example of Indian journalists turning to YouTube to report independently.
Ravish Kumar is the subject of While We Watched (2022), a documentary by Vinay Shukla that follows his work at NDTV amid a shrinking space for independent journalism. The film was screened internationally and won a Peabody Award; Kumar and Shukla accepted it at the ceremony in Los Angeles in 2024.
Ravish Kumar has spoken publicly about receiving death threats over his journalism. In May 2018 he said the frequency of threats had increased and described them as "well organised".
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