The News Star Of TV

The golden microphone that India Today and Aaj Tak journalists hold for reporting is Kalli Purie's brain child; the slugs that run down on news channels for some important programs are approved by her and she leads two of the most popular and power packed events in the country: India Today Conclave and Agenda Aaj Tak.

She is the Group Editorial Director, Broadcast and New Media, India Today Group and she lives with that designation every single day. It's hard to believe but Kalli Purie looks after every small thing that goes into the newsroom. She joined the flagship magazine India Today in 1996 as marketing Executive and Reporter and after working for two decades she has carved her way to success and reached the topmost position.

Her focus is on adopting new technologies to build a good social media and online platform which will complement the television broadcast business. She has also shifted her focus to consistent brand building and marketing of all the products. Purie is very bullish about brand building and has scaled up the events division with benchmarked events such as Agenda Aaj Tak and India Today Conclave.

Master Stroke
In May 2015, Headlines Today, the English news channel of the India Today Group, was reborn as India Today Television. Everyone tends to call it revamping and re-branding of Headlines Today, but Kalli Purie insisted it is not re-branding but we are launching a new channel. The re-launch was her brain child and she led it from the front.

Till May 2015, Headlines Today was riding on the back of its counterpart Aaj Tak but Purie aligned it with the India Today mother brand. She decided to cash in on the value of mother brand India Today Group. She took the decision to get a prime team for prime time news slot. The group had only one face Rahul Kanwal, she got senior journalists Rajdeep Sardesai and Karan Thapar on board.

With such a team, the channel became more robust in terms of covering the news, giving perspective as well as facts. The team brought a good amount of experience and freshness to the channel and that helped Headlines Today to remain the talking point with innovative shows and debates at prime time. Both Sardesai and Thapar played a vital role in increasing the graph of Headlines Today in the last one year.

Purie didn't take any chance and got the biggest names of the industry such as Amitabh Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra and Piyush Pandey to get the marketing and campaign correct.

Strong Views
In one of the interviews, Kalli Purie mentioned that creativity turns her on. She always has strong views when it comes to free press, television rating points, social media and everything that is relevant to the news business.

She believes that freedom of press in India is still all right and pointed out that US President, Donald Trump's decision of banning CNN, NYT and BBC from press briefings is very disturbing.

Purie has continuously raised her voice for the media industry. She finds attacks on media very odd and feels that it is media's job to always look for headline and stories. She is proud of what she does and openly confronts that she is in the news business for headlines. In her words "I'm proud of what we do. Yes we are here for the headlines, it's our job; yes we compete for TRPs because we don't want to live on doles."