Raju Narisetti reflects on Sukumar Ranganathan’s two-decade journey at HT Media

Raju Narisetti, Partner & Global Leader, McKinsey Publishing & Marketing, McKinsey & Company, reflects on Sukumar Ranganathan’s two-decade journey at HT Media as he prepares to step down as Editor-in-Chief of Hindustan Times in November.

On 13 August 2026, HT Media Group announced a leadership transition at Hindustan Times, with Kunal Pradhan set to join as Acting Editor-in-Chief on 1 October. He will take over as Editor-in-Chief in mid-November, succeeding Sukumar Ranganathan, who will leave the organisation after this year’s Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Below is Narisetti’s complete post shared on LinkedIn:

Twenty years is a very long innings at the top of any newsroom. In Indian journalism, perhaps even more so.

So, a personal note on Sukumar Ranganathan, who will step down as Editor-in-Chief of Hindustan Times in November after two decades at HT Media Group, and after the unusual distinction of having edited two of its masthead news brands, MINT HT Media Ltd. and Hindustan Times.

In the summer of 2006, I wooed a somewhat skeptical Suku away from Business Today, where he was a star, to join the small team I was assembling to create Mint. He became my deputy and, very quickly, a partner-in-crime in the best sense of that phrase.

We plotted our hires, and the product we would launch, mostly in secret. Post-lauch, we obsessed over stories, headlines, people, standards and the thousand details involved in the daily miracle--one that was staggerily different than every other newspaper in India at that time. And when I left, the timing also driven by the fact Suku was more than ready, he took over as Editor of Mint and, importantly, built on the its foundations rather than treating them as something that needed to be dismantled simply because the masthed changed. That is harder--and rarer--than it sounds.

He went on to lead Mint for many years and then took on the much bigger and rather different challenge of editing Hindustan Times.

Neither assignment was an easy one. Mint has always had to compete with a much larger, in circulation, The Economic Times; HT was usually less well-funded than The Times Of India.

Being No. 2 commercially doesn’t mean accepting No. 2 journalism. Both newsrooms, under Suku, continued to more than hold their own journalistically, remain relevant and produce work that mattered.

There will inevitably be different views of any editor’s tenure, particularly one as long as Suku’s at HT. But navigating Indian journalism through these past several years while keeping your journalistic compass, your integrity and your curiosity intact requires considerable mettle. Suku has all three.

He can be intimidating--particularly, I suspect, if you are less tenured colleague less prepared than he usually is. But behind that formidable analytical brain is one of the best spotters and developers of journalistic talent I have known.

An engineer by education, Suku has always brought an unusually analytical mind to journalism. Fortunately, there are other things occupying that mind too: an alarming enthusiasm for comic books and a rather more tranquil interest in birds. I hope that after November he gets, at least briefly, more time for both.

Suku: there aren’t many editors who can look back on two decades leading major newsrooms and say they left with their curiosity undimmed, their independence intact and their standards still held high. You can. That, more than any title, is worth celebrating.

Looking forward to toasting two, 20-year milestones when we catch up early next year: Mint’s and yours. There is much to celebrate.