Happy Birthday Markand Adhikari: The pioneer who built a television legacy of firsts

Few media entrepreneurs can claim to have anticipated as many turning points in Indian television as Markand Adhikari. Across more than four decades, his journey has been defined not simply by the programmes and channels he helped create, but by his ability to recognise what the medium could become before the rest of the industry did.

As he celebrates his birthday on August 26, his career offers a remarkable view of Indian television’s transformation—from the single-channel Doordarshan era to sponsored programming, satellite broadcasting, genre-led channels, interactive news and today’s multi-platform media ecosystem.

At the heart of this journey is Sri Adhikari Brothers, the enterprise Markand Adhikari built with his late brother, Gautam Adhikari. What began during the formative years of commercial television grew into one of India’s most recognisable media groups, leaving its imprint on content creation, broadcasting and the business architecture of the industry.

Helping write the commercial grammar of Doordarshan

The Adhikari Brothers were among the earliest independent production houses to create commercial programmes and serials for Doordarshan in the 1980s, at a time when television production in India was still in its infancy. The opportunities were limited, the rules were still evolving and there was no established playbook for building a large private content business around the national broadcaster.

It was in this environment that the company helped introduce the concept of sponsored programming on Doordarshan. The model brought producers, advertisers and audiences into a new commercial equation and subsequently became an integral part of Indian television programming. It was a pivotal shift: private producers could create distinctive programming, brands could associate with popular content and television could begin developing into a viable industry.

That instinct—to find a new space and create a model around it—would become a defining feature of Markand Adhikari’s career.

Moving early into the satellite era

When Zee TV arrived as India’s first private satellite television channel, Sri Adhikari Brothers was again among the early movers. The production house launched the fiction programme Commander, a thriller that became one of the popular successes of the period and demonstrated its ability to adapt storytelling to a new generation of viewers.

The company also broke new ground with Philips Top 10, pioneering a stand-up comedy-led countdown format. By bringing humour and music rankings together in an entertaining television package, the programme offered viewers something distinct from conventional fiction and variety programming. It was an early example of the format innovation that would later become central to competitive television.

As DD Metro expanded the programming canvas in the mid-1990s, Sri Adhikari Brothers was once again among the first production houses to respond. It created shows such as Shrimaan Shrimati, All the Best and Hello Inspector—programmes that became memorable parts of the era and continue to evoke nostalgia among television audiences.

The group’s experimentation was not limited to serials. Nearly three decades ago, it also pioneered the idea of premiering an original feature-length film on the small screen with Chehraa. Starring Madhoo, remembered widely for Roja, and Ayub Khan, the film was telecast on Doordarshan at a time when producing an original movie specifically for television was a highly unconventional proposition. The initiative reflected an understanding that television could be more than a home for episodic programmes; it could also become a platform for original cinematic storytelling.

Taking Indian content and its business to new frontiers

Sri Adhikari Brothers also looked beyond domestic audiences early in its journey. It became one of the first Indian production houses to create original fiction programming for TV Asia in the UK and the US, taking locally produced storytelling to international television platforms and serving the growing Indian diaspora.

Its creative ambition was matched by an equally important corporate milestone. In 1995, Sri Adhikari Brothers became India’s first television production company to be listed on both the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange. At a time when content creation was rarely regarded as an institutional or investible business, the listing gave television production a new corporate legitimacy. It signalled that a company built around ideas, formats and intellectual property could also enter the public markets.

Creating a channel and then a category

The next major leap came in 2000, when Sri Adhikari Brothers became the first production house in the country to launch its own entertainment channel, SAB TV. The move represented a decisive transition from supplying content to broadcasters to becoming a broadcaster in its own right.

More significantly, SAB TV chose differentiation over imitation. At a time when Hindi general entertainment was increasingly dominated by family dramas and the “saas-bahu” template, SAB TV carved out a distinct identity through humour. It emerged as India’s first 24-hour comedy channel, creating a dedicated space for light-hearted, family-oriented entertainment.

That positioning was both a creative and strategic statement. Instead of competing with established networks on their terms, SAB TV built an identifiable genre proposition of its own. The brand’s continuing association with comedy, long after it became part of Sony’s television portfolio, underlines the strength of the category and identity originally created by the Adhikari Brothers.

From breaking news to ‘breaking views’

Markand Adhikari’s appetite for experimentation was visible once again with the launch of Janmat more than two decades ago. Conceived as an interactive, discussion-led news and current affairs channel, Janmat moved beyond the one-way delivery of headlines and placed public participation, debate and opinion at the centre of its programming.

Positioned as a “views” channel, it sought to blend news with audience voices through participative formats. Long before viewer interaction, opinion panels and debate-driven programming became dominant features of news television, Janmat recognised the growing appetite for conversation around the news. The channel therefore stands as another example of the group identifying a programming shift well before it became an industry norm.

A legacy measured in ideas and intellectual property

The scale of the Sri Adhikari Brothers legacy is also reflected in its content archive. It remains one of the rare private production houses in India to have built an intellectual property library of more than 5,000 hours. In an era when media value is increasingly linked to ownership of enduring stories, formats and characters, this extensive archive represents both a record of Indian television history and a significant strategic asset.

Over time, the group’s presence has expanded across virtually the entire media and entertainment value chain. Its interests span television and digital production, broadcasting and digital channels, film production and distribution, VFX studios, publishing, and news and current affairs platforms. That breadth demonstrates how an enterprise born in the early days of television evolved with every major shift in the media landscape.

Yet Markand Adhikari’s contribution cannot be understood through scale alone. The more revealing measure is the number of times he and the group ventured into territory where no established template existed: sponsored shows on Doordarshan, original programming for satellite television, fiction for international platforms, a publicly listed production company, a broadcaster born from a production house, a round-the-clock comedy channel and an interactive “views” platform.

On his birthday, Markand Adhikari’s career is a reminder that media leadership is ultimately about seeing the next possibility early—and having the conviction to build it. His is not merely a story of participating in the growth of Indian television; it is the story of helping shape its formats, its economics and its entrepreneurial imagination.

Happy birthday to a pioneer whose legacy is written across generations of Indian broadcasting.