Press ยท Coverage of Sabira Merchant
Sabira Merchant in the press.
Interviews, features, reviews and recorded sessions from the outlets that have covered her work on stage, on television and as a coach. Every item links to the original piece on the publisher’s own site.
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Society Achievers
Raell Padamsee on reviving Theatre Group Bombay. Names Sabira Merchant among the theatre stalwarts reunited for a Shakespearean tribute to Alyque Padamsee. Read on Society Achievers
Beauty Pageants (YouTube)
A recorded diction session with Ayushree Malik, India’s entrant at Miss Supranational 2025, ahead of the pageant. Watch on YouTube
Beauty Pageants (YouTube)
A recorded diction session with Nandini Gupta, Femina Miss India World 2023, in preparation for the Miss World stage. Watch on YouTube
ThePrint
An excerpt from her memoir on Studio 29, one of Mumbai’s first nightclubs, and the city’s disco years. Read on ThePrint
The Free Press Journal
Yogesh Pawar reviews A Full Life, from Doordarshan and Studio 29 to pageant coaching and corporate etiquette. Read on The Free Press Journal
The New Indian Express
A video interview on the memoir and the life behind it. Watch on YouTube
Mid-day
A video feature on the memoir, with her account of the women of Bombay in the 1970s. Watch on YouTube
Homegrown
A history of Studio 29, the members-only nightclub she founded in the early 1980s. Read on Homegrown
Sotheby’s (YouTube)
An Expert Voices film on the Gaitonde canvas in her home and her collecting of modern Indian art. Watch on YouTube
Sotheby’s
A profile in the series The Piece That Started My Collection, ahead of the Boundless: India auction in Mumbai. Read on Sotheby’s
Bollywood Hungama
Her recollections of coaching Priyanka Chopra for Femina Miss India and Miss World. Read on Bollywood Hungama
Mumbai Theatre Guide
Deepa Punjani reviews The Buckingham Secret, in which she plays Queen Elizabeth. Read on Mumbai Theatre Guide
DNA
Udayan Mukherjee’s history of English-language theatre in Bombay, which counts her among the figures who shaped Theatre Group Bombay. Read on DNA
Times Now
A television interview with her as the Femina Miss India etiquette and diction expert. Watch on YouTube
Mint Lounge
Quoted as an etiquette specialist in a Lounge piece on Delhi’s courtesy campaign before the Commonwealth Games. Read on Mint
For media
Short biography
Sabira Merchant is a Mumbai-born actor, television host and etiquette and diction trainer. Educated at a finishing school in Switzerland, she began in English-language theatre in the 1960s with Theatre Group Bombay and won an All India Critics Association award for her Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire. For fifteen years she hosted Doordarshan’s English word game What’s the Good Word?, one of the longest-running quiz shows on Indian television. On screen she appeared in Shyam Benegal’s Trikal (1985) and the British film Sixth Happiness (1997). In the early 1980s she founded Studio 29, one of Mumbai’s first nightclubs. She has groomed Femina Miss India contestants for international pageants, among them Priyanka Chopra, Lara Dutta, Yukta Mookhey and Diana Hayden, and continues to coach India’s representatives in diction. Her memoir, A Full Life, written with Mitali Parekh, was published by Jaico in 2022.
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Press enquiries
Interview requests, photographs and fact checks are handled by Princeton Academy, which facilitates the institute. Write to register@princetonacademy.co.in with your outlet, your deadline and what you need.
The programmes behind the profile.
Grooming, etiquette and executive-presence programmes designed and overseen by Sabira Merchant. Open workshops in Mumbai, in-company across India.