MUMBAI: A day ahead of the schedule set by The Walt Disney Company to close its $71.3 billion acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox (12:02 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, March 20), comes the confirmation that Rupert Murdoch’s youngest son James is independently setting up shop in India.
Nitin Kukreja, chief executive of IQuest Enterprises Private Limited, the investment company that handles all the businesses of serial entrepreneur Nimmagadda Prasad, is the man the Murdoch scion has appointed to head the first office outside the US for his new investment firm, Lupa Systems, in Mumbai.
Speaking to Economic Times on the development, Kukreja said, “James has always been bullish on India. It is a reaffirmation of this fact that the first office outside New-York will be here in Mumbai.”
Kukreja joined IQuest, an investment company with a portfolio across sports, healthcare, hospitality and technology, in January 2018 following a 10-year stint at Star India, where his last role was as CEO of Star Sports. Kukreja announced his resignation from Star India in November 2016 and officially left India’s leading entertainment network on March 31 the following year.
Though the former Star Sports head refused to reveal the size of the team or the investment corpus planned for India, Kukreja told ET it would “be a function of the opportunities that we come across. It will be in themes, where there is an interesting interplay of content and technology going on”.
In his four years heading Star Sports, Kukreja was involved in the initiation of domestic sports leagues like the Pro Kabaddi League, Indian Super League, Hockey India League and the Premier Badminton League; the reinvention of the Kabaddi World Cup and the initiation of premium sports broadcast in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam.
In his earlier role with Star, Kukreja was head of business development, where his role involved formulation of the long-term strategy for the company and execution of inorganic growth opportunities. In this role, he worked on laying out the strategic roadmap for the company till 2020 and on the acquisitions of Asianet and ESPN-Star Sports.
Prior to Star, Kukreja worked in the investment banking and private equity divisions of Morgan Stanley and in the audit and assurance division of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
