Aroon Purie

Purie graduated from The Doon School (where his contemporary was Rajiv Gandhi, former Indian prime minister) and earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the London School of Economics in 1965. Bollywood actress Koel Purie is his youngest daughter.

He started his career in 1970 at Thomson Press as Production Controller and continues to be its guiding force even though he handed over to his son Ankoor Purie. With five facilities across India, it has a national presence. He began the India Today Group with an eponymous magazine in 1975. Today the group is India's most diversified media group with 32 magazines, 7 radio stations, 4 TV channels, 1 newspaper, multiple web and mobile portals, a leading classical music label and book publishing arm.

India Today

Vidya Vilas Purie, Aroon Purie's father, launched the fortnightly magazine India Today in 1975, with his daughter Madhu Trehan as its editor and Aroon Purie as its publisher. The magazine was born during the Emergency declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. With India Today, Aroon tried to "fill the information gap which exists amongst persons interested in India residing abroad". With editions in five languages, it is the most widely–read publication in India – a position which, as of 2006, it had held for over a decade – with a readership of over 11 million.

He also set the journalistic style for the 24-hour news and current affairs Hindi news channel Aaj Tak and English news channel Headlines Today. In 2025, at the FICCI Frames conference, Purie commented that artificial intelligence poses an “existential threat” to the creation of credible journalism, warning that AI-generated content could erode trust in news media.

‌In 2007 a criminal defamation case was filed against Aroon Purie over a report titled “Mission Misconduct” published in India Today in April 2007. According to the article, three Indian officials posted in the UK were “recalled in quick succession following serious allegations of sexual misconduct, corruption in issuance of visas and sale of Indian passports to illegal immigrants”.

The Supreme Court quashed the case against Aroon Purie in October 2022 over the article published in 2007 by India today. Though Chief Justice U.U. Lalit, Justice Ravindra Bhat, and Justice Bela M Trivedi quashed the case against Purie; they did not grant relief to the author of the news article.