In this work, we report the successful formation of MgO doped TiO2 nanocrystals (NCs) by simple wet-chemical method. The XRD exhibits a marginal decrease in the crystalline size of TiO2 nanosamples by the addition of MgO dopant. UV-Vis spectral analysis shows that the addition of MgO in TiO2 resulted in the red shift of the absorption edge. The optical energy band-gap and molecular vibrational analysis of doped nanosample was ascertained from photoluminescence (PL) and micro-Raman scattering technique respectively. HR-TEM analysis reveals that the substitution has sharply reduced the particle size of TiO2NCs.