Mr. Niret Alva

Chairman,
Miditech
Date- 5th March'10
Topic- Reality of reality shows
Mr. Niret has a long career as reporter, script writer, anchor, producer and director in television. He is a graduate in History from St. Stephen’s College Delhi, has a post graduate diploma in journalism , from the Indian Institute of Mass Communications, is a recipient of a certificate from the Radio Netherlands Training Centre in Hilversum(Holland) for a News and Current Affairs course in Television and has a law degree(LLB) from Mumbai University.
Mr. Niret kicked off as a Trainee Reporter/Scriptwriter with Press Trust of India, Television. Beginning his career when television was still government controlled in the late 1980s he moved on to become a Correspondent with Eyewitness, a monthly independent video news magazine, owned by Hindustan Times Television in 1990. He learned the ropes reporting from all the troubled spots in country and covering subjects as diverse as Indian Attitudes to sex, caste violence, the dangers of the civilian use of the army and the bungled capture of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassin. From documentaries to news stories, youth based programmes and business shows to a soft feature on Bollywood superstar, Aamir Khan, the first five years of Mr. Niret 's career saw him learn television and its many nuances on the job by making mistakes and learning from them, he says. In 1992, he joined his brother Nikhil at Miditech. Teaming up with his brother whom he complimented in talent and temperament, helped the company do series and programmes that were innovative, intriguing, award winning and critic satisfying.
Mr. Niret helped to develop and built major programming brands like Indian Idol, Galli Galli Sim Sim (Sesame Street), Wheels, and Living on the Edge. He is also a world-class television presenter having anchored travel(Great Escape), automobile(Wheels) and environment (Living on the Edge and Earth Report) shows over the course of his career. He’s won an Asian Television Award for Best anchor for “Wheels” for BBC World and has been a runner up twice for the same show. In 2007 , Mr. Niret won a National Award for Excellence in Science based communication in the visual medium. he’s scripted, directed and been associated with several international, award winning documentaries like The Great Descent and Operation Hot Pursuit. A believer in collective intelligence ,he says that Miditech’s team , with its diverse talents, track record and the ability to keep pushing has helped it do shows that seemed impossible at first but joyously elementary at the end. Mr. Niret is set to see what miditech can do in the rapidly evolving television space where yesterday’s content producers are today’s broadcasters and where today’s telecom providers may well be tomorrow’s broadcasters unless of course broadcasters have morphed into something entirely new before that.
Mr. Niret is married toMiss Anuja Chauhan, Executive Vice president and Executive Creative Director at JWalterThomson, India’s biggest advertising agency. . They have three children, Niharika(12), Nayantara(9) and Daivik(6). They live with Eppa who was a care giver to Mr. Niret , when he was in his teens and now care giver and cook to Mr. Niret , Miss Anuja and their children and Django a year old Tibetan apso in Gurgaon, outside New Delhi........Mr. Niret loves reading, meditating, sleeping and watching movies in a theater whenever possible.