Karuna Samtani, the pioneering Head of Programming and first employee of Zee TV, joins Vinta Nanda to reveal the untold story of India's satellite television revolution, iconic shows, fearless storytelling, and a remarkable creative legacy.

When India switched on its first private Hindi satellite television channel in October 1992, very few people imagined they were witnessing the birth of a cultural revolution. At the heart of that transformation was Karuna Samtani—the first employee and Head of Programming of Zee TV—who arrived not from television, but from the fiercely creative world of advertising.

In just six months, she helped build a channel that challenged Doordarshan's monopoly, discovered a generation of writers and producers, and commissioned shows that would redefine Indian storytelling.  

From Tara, Banegi Apni Baat, Hasratein, Zee Horror Show, Antakshari and Sa Re Ga Ma, Karuna's programming philosophy was astonishingly simple: find authentic talent, trust storytellers, and never underestimate the intelligence of the audience.

At a time when television had no formulas to follow, she created them.   

This conversation between Vinta Nanda and Karuna Samtani is more than an interview. It is an oral history of Indian satellite television—told by the woman who helped invent it.

The Story Before Television

Karuna Samtani begins not with success, but with observation. Growing up in a disciplined middle-class family with five sisters, she describes herself as "a lone ranger"—the youngest child surrounded by adults, learning more by watching than by speaking. That habit of observing human behaviour became the foundation of everything she would later create. As she says in the interview, reality always sold best because people recognised themselves within it.  

Her early ambition had nothing to do with media. She wanted to become a psychoanalyst. Life intervened when the sister who was to sponsor her studies in America passed away, forcing Karuna into the workforce instead. A temporary summer job at Hindustan Thompson Associates became an unlikely turning point. She was fired—not for incompetence—but for challenging office hierarchy and refusing to stay within her brief. Ironically, that dismissal caught the attention of legendary advertising filmmaker Mohammed Khan, who hired her because, in his words, "this girl has got fire."  

That fire would soon ignite an industry.

Learning Without Permission

One of the remarkable threads running through Karuna's journey is that she never formally trained for most of the jobs she excelled at. She produced award-winning audio visuals without attending film school, negotiated major advertising campaigns through instinct rather than theory, and discovered that her greatest professional strength was something she never consciously cultivated—the ability to think on her feet.  

Again and again, she repeats one idea that defines her career: "I never say no. I do it."

It isn't bravado. It is a philosophy built on fearlessness. For Karuna, the absence of fear creates freedom—the freedom to imagine solutions instead of obstacles.

Building Zee TV From an Empty Room

Vinta recalls her first memory of Karuna vividly: a cavernous Worli office with almost no furniture, one table under a solitary light, and a young executive reading unsolicited scripts from complete strangers. That stranger was Vinta herself, carrying the two-page story that would eventually become Tara.  

Karuna laughs while remembering those days because, in her mind, nothing was glamorous. She insists she never consciously joined Zee as a "dream job." She simply became part of a team racing against an impossible deadline after the transponder agreement was signed in April 1992. The mission was brutally clear: launch India's first private Hindi satellite channel by October.  

What followed has become television folklore. There were only 17 employees on launch day. Remove the drivers, secretary and support staff, and barely ten people were running an entire national television channel. Everyone packed tapes, coordinated couriers, solved technical crises and worked through riots, bomb blasts and impossible deadlines. Nobody spoke about work-life balance because there was simply work—and the shared belief that something historic was being built.  

Programming for Every Indian

Perhaps Karuna's greatest innovation wasn't any individual show—it was her understanding of audiences. She reveals that Zee's first programming grid was inspired by an unexpected source: her school timetable. Difficult subjects belonged to the morning, easier ones followed lunch, Fridays felt lighter than Mondays. She translated that rhythm into television viewing habits, creating soft entry points for families returning home, stronger emotional programming in prime time, and late-night genre experimentation like Zee Horror Show.  

Rather than buying expensive productions, she searched for people. She spotted Tony and Deeya Singh's talent through documentary interviews and encouraged them to create Banegi Apni Baat. She discovered Sanjeev Bhattacharya after watching Chunauti on Doordarshan. She backed Manish Goswami's Parampara despite colleagues dismissing it as outdated. She believed producers could be created if storytellers were trusted.  

Budgets were tiny. Conviction was enormous.

Women Before They Became Trends

Long before "strong female protagonists" became industry vocabulary, Karuna was commissioning women who questioned marriage, careers, sexuality and independence without turning them into slogans.

Asked whether her shows were intentionally feminist, she responds almost casually: "We were much ahead in time." The intention wasn't to preach. It was to portray women as emotionally complex human beings living contemporary lives. That is precisely why shows like Tara, Hasratein and Shadi Ya…? felt revolutionary—they recognised women audiences instead of merely addressing them.

She also offers one of the interview's sharpest observations about what happened afterwards. Television, she says, gradually shifted its axis from content to gloss, from human stories to lifestyle imagery. Once one formula succeeded, every channel repeated it until originality disappeared.  It is a diagnosis that still feels remarkably relevant.

The Legacy of Fearlessness

The conversation eventually becomes deeply personal, moving from programming to marriage, divorce and resilience. Karuna refuses to romanticise courage. Instead, she distinguishes it from something rarer. "Courage," she says, "belongs to people who are fearful. A fearless person doesn't know the concept of courage."

It is perhaps the sentence that explains both her life and her work. Whether walking away from relationships, leaving prestigious positions on principle, or commissioning unknown creators over established names, Karuna Samtani consistently chose authenticity over approval.  

Looking back, she doesn't celebrate ratings or awards. She remembers the joy of creation, the laughter of a tiny team building an impossible dream, and the privilege of changing the way India watched television.

This podcast is a tribute to that extraordinary journey—and to the woman who proved that great revolutions often begin with one fearless decision to simply say, "Let's do it."

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