Even as Reliance Industries Limited, Viacom 18 Media Private Limited and The Walt Disney Company announced Thursday that the merger of the media and JioCinema businesses of Viacom18 into Star India Private Limited (SIPL) has become effective, the leadership team that will drive the businesses of the joint venture have been confirmed.
Nita Ambani is the chairperson of the JV, with Uday Shankar as vice chairperson providing strategic guidance to the JV.
The JV will be spearheaded by three CEOs who will lead the company into a new era of ambition and disruption.
Kevin Vaz will head the entertainment organisation across platforms.
Kiran Mani will take charge of the combined digital organization.
Sanjog Gupta will lead the combined sports organisation.
Together, they will leverage their unique strengths to cultivate a bold, transformative vision that challenges the status quo and sets new standards in the industry.
The other key executives of the JV are as follows:
Alok Jain – Head of Cluster, Entertainment (Colors, Digital Hindi, Niche, Movies and Studio). Jain was the president of General Entertainment at Viacom18.
Sumanta Bose – Head of Cluster, Entertainment (Star Plus and Bharat, Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati). Bose was the business head for the Hindi-speaking market and content head for Hotstar Hindi.
Krishnan Kutty – Head of Cluster, Entertainment (South). His earlier designation was business and content head for the entire South & Marathi regional portfolio.
Ajit Varghese – Head of Revenue, Entertainment & International. He was the head of network ad sales, Disney Star.
Ishan Chatterjee – Head of Business, Sports Revenue, SMB & Creator. Chatterjee joined Viacom18 as chief business officer last month, bringing experience from his previous role at YouTube.
Piyush Goyal – Head of TV Distribution. He earlier served as chief operating officer at Indiacast Media.
Rasesh Upadhyay – To work directly with Kevin Vaz to drive Entertainment business strategy and operations.
Bharath Ram – Head of Product. He has previously worked at Flipkart, Instagram, and Prime Video.
Akash Saxena – Head of Technology. He was the chief technical & product officer at Viacom18.
Shoury Bharadwaj – Head of Engineering. He had recently joined Viacom18 as the head of Engineering — Viewer Experience. Before that, he was with Flipkart as senior director of Engineering.
Vijay Seshadri – Chief Architect. He was appointed chief technical advisor at Viacom18 in July. Sheshadri was earlier at Swiggy.
Hursh Shrivastava – Head of Partnerships
Sushant Sreeram – Head of Marketing. He joined Viaocm18 from Amazon Prime Video.
Gaurav Gokhale – To work directly with Kiran Mani to drive Digital business strategy and operations.
Ambuj Kashyap – To work directly with Uday Shankar and partner with CEOs on strategic and business initiatives. Earlier, he was the co-founder and chief business officer, IHX, a healthcare data platform.
Rishi Gaind – Head of Human Resources. He was the Head of Human Resources at Disney Star.
George Cherian – Head of Corporate Communications & PR. He held the same role at Disney Star before this.
Sandeep Jain – Head of Commercial. Jain was the EVP of Commercials at Star India.
Mukesh Mundhra – Transition Finance Head. Rangarajan will work on the financial integration of both organisations as a part of the transition.
Kshripra Jatana – Transition Legal Head.
Rajat Nigam – Transition Head of IT and Media Operations.
