Sashi Kumar

Sashi Kumar

"As founder President of Asianet : In the late 80s, he launched Asianet, India's first satellite TV channel in the regional language, in late 1992. Telecasting in Malayalm, the channel was targeted at Kerala and the large diaspora of Malayalees in the rest of India and the Gulf states. Simultaneously he also launched Asianet Satcom, a cable company in Kerala that took up state-wide cabling using the electricity poles. Both these were pioneering steps in the evolution of independent Satellite TV and Cable in India. The Asianet channel set new trends and standards in intelligent and wholesome programming that resisted the innate tendency of the medium to dumb down. Asianet Satcom was the first state-wide cable system in India.

"As founder Chairman of Media Development Foundation & Asian College of Journalism : In 1999 Sashi Kumar founded the Media Development Foundation as a nonprofit public Trust dedicated to excellence in journalism education and best practices in the profession. He set up the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai. The college has already acquired the stature of the premier institution of journalism education in this part of the world attracting the best students seeking to study journalism from across India and other countries in south Asia, and forging links with some of the best in the field like the BBC, the Columbia School of Journalism in New York, and Cardiff and Westminster in the UK."

• Director, The Real News
• Founder and Chair, Media Development Foundation