Govindraj Ethiraj

Govindraj Ethiraj is a television and print journalist who has reported and written on Indian business for over 25 years. He is a media executive and entrepreneur whose public interest journalism ventures use data to tell stories in areas like health, education and climate as well as safeguard the transparency, accuracy, and integrity of news.
Most recently, he founded BOOM (www.boomlive.in ), an independent journalism initiative that fights misinformation and explains issues with the larger objective of making the internet safer.He also founded the award-winning IndiaSpend (indiaspend.org ), a public interest journalism outfit which use data to write and syndicate stories in areas like health, education, environment and FactChecker (factchecker.in )which monitors media, politicians and other figures for accuracy.
BOOM and FactChecker were India’s first verified members of the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), affiliated with Poynter Institute. IndiaSpend is a member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN). Govindraj also sits on the global board of the St.Petersburg, US, headquartered IFCN since inception. Previously, he was Founder-Editor in Chief of Bloomberg TV India, a 24-hours business news service launched out of Mumbai in 2008.
Prior to setting up Bloomberg TV, he worked with Business Standard newspaper as Editor (New Media), and before that, Govindraj spent five years with television channel CNBC-TV18 where he actively drove most of the channels’ programming growth and expansion. Prior to television, he worked in print in The Economic Times and leading business magazines. Govindraj was named a 2018 McNulty Prize Laureate in recognition for his leadership with BOOM, IndiaSpend, and FactChecker. He is a Fellow of the Inaugural Class of Ananta Aspen’s India Leadership Initiative and the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and winner of the 2014 BMW Responsible Leaders Awards.