Prannoy Roy

Prannoy Lal Roy (; born 15 October 1949) is an Indian economist, chartered accountant, psephologist, journalist and author. (He currently works with his new news company, DeKoder.)

Early life and education Prannoy Lal Roy was born in Calcutta, West Bengal on 15 October 1949, in a Bengali Christian family to P. L. "Hurricane" Roy, an executive at a multinational corporation in the city. His paternal grandfather was Paresh Lal Roy, a traffic superintendent and an amateur boxer, known as the "father of Indian boxing" for having popularised the sport in the country.

Roy is the great-grandson of suffragist and social reformer Lolita Roy and grand nephew of Indra Lal Roy, the first Indian flying ace. He is also a cousin of writer Arundhati Roy.

Roy attended La Martiniere Calcutta and The Doon School, the private boys' boarding school in Dehradun, Uttar Pradesh (now in Uttarakhand). He was at the boarding school during his teenage years when he met Radhika Das, whom he would later marry. Following his schooling, he enrolled at the Queen Mary University of London and graduated in 1973 with first class honours in economics. He then became a certified chartered accountant and a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in 1975. Roy is described to have been passionate about election results since his childhood and had produced his first election forecast for the 1977 Indian general election. The forecast was published by the Mainstream magazine and had predicted a victory for the Janata Party. For the 1984 Indian general election, Roy produced an extremely accurate election forecast which predicted an Indian National Congress victory with 400 seats. The prediction earned him the reputation of being the most successful psephologist in India. Radhika and Prannoy Roy are considered to be the co-founders of the company, Doordarshan was initially wary of allowing private production houses to cover domestic news, and NDTV was contracted to produce a weekly international news programme called The World This Week for the public broadcaster.

Prannoy Roy, in the meantime, worked as an associate professor for a year in 1985 at the Delhi School of Economics. In 1986–1987, he was hired in a team of economists to build a macro-econometric model of India for the Ministry of Finance. The model is the largest of its kind.

NDTV requested for and received a contract from Doordarshan to produce a daily news bulletin on domestic affairs called The News Tonight on its second channel in 1995. The Roys who were the promoters of the company sought and acquired investments from several Indian businesses for the company in order to produce the show, Later, the company also received contracts to produce shows such as The News Hour and Good Morning India for Doordarshan. Prannoy Roy was the news presenter for the NDTV bulletins and became the face of the NDTV brand in the process. His wife, Radhika Roy kept a low profile in comparison, being more invested in the editorial and production processes of the company. In the previous year, the incumbent director general of Doordarshan had also quit the public broadcaster and jointed its multinational rival, the Star network. These developments created animosity in the government and a parliamentary committee was set up to scrutinise the activities of the former director general which alleged that there were "irregularities" in the contracts with NDTV. The cases went on for several years in the form of a protracted conflict, NDTV became an independent news broadcaster in the same year with the launch of two news channels NDTV 24x7 and NDTV India. Roy, along with his wife, was designated as the executive co-chairpersons of NDTV after 2011. The news network of NDTV had reported critically about state involvement in the 2002 Gujarat riots where over a 1,000 people were killed. The government attempted to ban the Hindi news channel NDTV India in 2016 and retracted following backlash, including cross media protests from journalists. In 2017, the residence of the Roys at Greater Kailash, Delhi were raided by the CBI, The Editor's Guild of India and journalists unions called it an attack on press freedom. The order was appealed against and stayed by the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT). In December 2020, SEBI imposed a fine on the Roys worth . SAT directed the Roys to deposit 50% of the sum, conditional on a second hearing. The company moved to the Supreme Court of India (SCI) which exempted them from the deposits. Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud remarked that it was "brash" for the tribunal to have demanded it. In March 2026, Delhi High Court quashed Look Out Circulars issued by CBI against Roy.

In December 2022, Radhika and Prannoy Roy sold 27.26 per cent out of their 32.26 per cent shareholding in the news network to Adani Group, who till then had over a 37% stake in NDTV, making the conglomerate the single largest shareholder with over 64.71 per cent stake.

In January 2024, Roy launched DeKoder, an AI-driven digital platform for analysis of elections and global trends in 15 Indian languages.

In January 2026, Delhi High Court quashed IT reassessment notices against Roy and imposed Rs 2 lakh fine on IT Department.

Awards His academic awards include the Leverhulme Trust (UK) Fellowship, Queen Mary Prize for results at BSc, and an OPOS Scholarship at the Doon School to study at Haileybury College.

He won the Red Ink award by Mumbai Press Club for lifetime achievement for his consistent and pioneering contribution to news television and his service to journalism in 2015.