After completing his matriculation in 1902, he went to
Bombay and started a shoe company named Rath & Co. He became fluent in
Gujarati while staying there. He made a friendship with a foreigner who introduced him to journalism while he was an assistant editor at
Bombay Chronicles. Thereafter he moved to
Pune and worked in a leather industry where he learnt skinning. But he could not stay there long due to his health ailments and had to come back
Odisha. For sometime he worked in Utkal Tannery of
Madhusudan Das as a manager, but then left for
Kolkata where he joined a medicine company named Young & Co. as manager. There he made an Odia association and organized the Odias for a separate province. On the advice of Nilamani Vidyaratna, he started publishing
Asha weekly from 1913. In 1928, he started publishing it daily as
Dainik Asha from
Brahmapur, Odisha on the Odia New Year's Day (Mesha Sankranti). It was the first Odia daily newspaper at that time. It had helped the people of Odisha to launch their struggle to secure the unification of the outlying Odia areas under one administration and spread the message of freedom movement of the country in the rural areas of the State. The Asha press also gave the opportunity to receive the practical training in daily newspaper work and journalism. After the publication of
Dainik Asha, Sashibhusan also published an English weekly called
The East Coast and entrusted its editorship to Pandit
Godabarish Misra. He was elected as vice-chairman of the former Berhampur Municipality and later elected as Public Representative from the
Ganjam district to
Madras Legislative Council during the
British Raj. He also worked extensively to eliminate animal sacrifice practices in Ganjam. On 5 May 1933 the first English daily of Odisha,
The New Orissa started publishing from the Asha press under the Editorship of Sashibhusan assisted by Mr. Sharma and Mr. K.N. Acharya who came from Madras. Mr. Acharya who was the colleague of Mr. Rath later became the Editor of New Orissa. The management of the paper was looked after by Mr. Hadu Raiguru who was a trusted Assistant and colleague of Mr. Rath. Sharat Mohapatra, a brother of Sashibhusan was an Asst. Editor in Dainik Asha who later became the Editor of weekly Asha and continued it for a long time even after the death of Mr. Rath. As Sashibhusan was covering the news about civil disobedience and
Salt Satyagraha regularly and abetted the salt satyagraha in
Ganjam district he was arrested in 1930 but was released in 1931. In 1936, a book
Kali Bhagabat written by Abhiram Paramhansha was printed in his
Asha Press which has a nationalistic tone to it. The book was therefore proscribed and its author was arrested. In this case Sashibhusan also became a co-accused for which he had to spend a lot of money for legal expenses. For the proper growth and development of Odia language and literature, necessity for the invention of Odia typewriter was greatly felt and a brother of Sashibhusan named Ranganath Mohapatra of
Surada,
Ganjam district invented the Odia typewriter in early forties. The typewriters were manufactured in Germany and were put to use in some of the offices soon after the formation of the separate
Orissa Province. The Zamindars of Ganjam and the Rajas of some of Garjats were encouraged to use the Odia typewriter. Though his newspaper regularly covered the matters pertaining to freedom struggle he however fell ill after 1936 for which he could not keep himself in active politics. He died on 20 March 1943 at the age of 58 only. ==Legacy==