Om Prakash Malik (Hindi: ॐ प्रकाश मलिक; September 29, 1966 – June 24, 2026) was an Indian-American web and technology writer. He founded and wrote content for Gigaom, which he sold in 2015 after it faced financial difficulty. He authored the book Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist and wrote articles published in venues such as The Wall Street Journal, Brandweek, and Crain Communications. He was a partner at True Ventures.
Biography
Early life and education
Malik was born in and grew up in a middle-class family in New Delhi. He graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, affiliated with Delhi University, in 1986, with an honors degree in chemistry.
Career
After graduating, Malik had several journalism positions in New Delhi, including with VP Fun and Newsmen Features, where he specialized in lifestyle features.
He moved to London and then spent time in Eastern Europe. He moved to New York City in 1993 to be a writer for India Abroad and then for Forbes. He was also a senior writer for Red Herring, focusing on the telecommunications sector. In late 1994, he launched DesiParty.com, an events site for Indian immigrants. Also in 1994, he co-founded the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA), and helped launch the now-defunct magazine, Masala, and its website Masala.com, a South Asian portal.
Malik was a senior editor on the original team at Forbes.com, founded in 1997 and led by David Churbuck. In 1999, he left Forbes.com to work as an investment manager at Hambrecht & Quist Asia Pacific; his stay there was brief because he decided he preferred writing and reporting.
In 2000, he moved to San Francisco, California to write for Business 2.0 magazine. In 2001, he started Gigaom, a blog. The website had a monthly global audience of over 500,000, and was among the top 50 blogs worldwide by Technorati rank. It was listed in the Blog 100 Index by CNET.
His book, Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist, was released in 2003. It investigated fraud by telecom companies during the dot-com bubble.
Malik announced on June 12, 2006, that he was going to work on Gigaom full-time, although he continued to be a contributing editor and had a regular column in Business 2.0 until its demise in October 2007.
In July 2006, Malik wrote a post about Twitter that was credited as one of the first media coverages of the social networking service.
From July 2007 to March 2008, Malik hosted the podcast The GigaOm Show on Revision3 with Joyce Kim, which focused on technology and business. Malik appeared frequently on television and in the media as a technology expert.
Malik left Gigaom in January 2014. In March 2015, the company ceased operations due to financial difficulty. In May 2015, it was acquired by Knowingly Corporation.
Om wrote regularly on technology for The New Yorker in the 2010s, and appeared as a tech trend commentator on broadcast outlets including BBC Television, BBC Radio, NPR, and Bloomberg West.
Personal life and death
In December 2007, Malik suffered a heart attack at age 41, caused, said Malik, by smoking, alcohol and a fatty diet. The heart attack forced him to reconsider his priorities.
Malik died on June 24, 2026, “after a long health journey with his heart”, said Om’s family.