Palki was born on 29 May 1982 in Pilani, Rajasthan and was brought up in both Pilani and Delhi.
She went to school at Loreto Convent, Tara Hall in Shimla, and later earned a Master’s degree in Communication and Journalism from the ICG Institute in Jaipur.She also learned French to C1 level at Alliance Française in Delhi. As of January 2026, she is 43 years old.

Palki comes from a family that values education.
Her father used to play cricket, and her mother worked as a beautician.She has an older sister named Sanchita Sharma, and she says her family has always supported her career.

She is married to Sanket Upadhyay, who is also a journalist.
That’s why she uses the surname Upadhyay.Sanket used to work at NDTV and now runs a YouTube channel called “TheRedMike” with over a million followers.They got married in 2008 and have a daughter named Manya Upadhyay.The family currently lives in Noida.

Palki started her career in 2002 as a reporter with Doordarshan, India’s public broadcaster.
She also did anchoring and wrote about current affairs. In 2004, she joined Hindustan Times as a staff writer covering social and civic issues, and she also wrote film reviews and did copy-editing for the newspaper’s Jaipur edition.

In 2005, she joined CNN-IBN (which later became CNN-News18) as an anchor.
She spent about ten years there and built a strong reputation in TV news.A big change came in 2019 when she joined WION (World Is One News) and started hosting their main evening show, “Gravitas.” This show became known for looking at world events from an Indian perspective, and it made Palki one of the country’s top experts in international affairs.

In September 2023, she left WION and moved to Firstpost, which is part of Network18.
She now works as Managing Editor there.Her show “Vantage” is a big hit on YouTube, along with other shows like “Flashback” and “Between the Lines.”

Palki has won several awards, including the Best News Reader Award in 2007, the ENBA award for Best International News Show in English for “Gravitas” in 2020, and the Bharat Asmita Jana Jagaran Shreshta Award in 2023 for her use of media.
She was also the first Indian journalist to cover Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and has reported on issues like the lives of Iraqi refugees and Tibetans living in India.

Estimates of Palki Sharma Upadhyay’s net worth are not consistent.
Some say it ranges from about ₹3–5 crore to as high as ₹15–30 crore, which is close to $4 million. In addition to her work in media, she has invested in a saree brand called Revya, which adds to her income.Because the numbers vary so much, her exact net worth isn’t clear, but she is considered one of the top earners among Indian broadcast journalists.