Armed with burning ambition, keen business sense and amazing audacity, Raghav Bahl started Television Eighteen (TV18) with a handful of talented professionals and rank beginners. Starting from a small room in New Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave, TV18 grew into Network18—one of India’s biggest media conglomerates spanning television, print, films, the Internet, business, general news, drama and entertainment. In less than two decades, filled with excitement, adventure and frequent crises, Network 18 launched pioneering properties, television and film careers and racked up partnerships with blue chip media brands. This is a story of brilliant ideas, severe setbacks, naked aggression, spectacular victories and fatal flaws.
‘A tale of inspired vision, of audacious risk-taking, of alternating crises and opportunities, of last-minute negotiations reversing agreed outcomes, struggles with obdurate bureaucrats . . . And above all, the inexorable laws of the market’—IANS
‘This is the story of how the Indian media grew to such a remarkable and spectacular business heights in a couple of decades through the enterprise, imagination and sheer passion of its frontiersman’—The Free Press Journal
‘This is instructive reading for any entrepreneur, indeed, for any CEO, whether owner or professional’—The Hoot.