MUMBAI: Star India managing director Sanjay Gupta has confirmed the appointment of Gautam Thakar as chief executive officer – Star Sports.
In his new role, Thakar will lead the sports broadcast business as its CEO. His appointment is effective January 15 2018 and fills a vacancy open since April 1 when Nitin Kukreja resigned from the position.
Gupta commented: “We are happy to welcome Gautam into the Star India family to lead our next paradigm in sports broadcasting. He brings to the table a wealth of knowledge and proven strategic capabilities. We at Star have always set ourselves a bold growth agenda and we are confident that Gautam will contribute in taking the multi-sports culture that Star has pioneered in India, to the next level.”
Before making the appointment official, Gupta, in an internal company communication accessed by Economic Times, had stated, “Over 5 years ago, we embarked upon transforming Indian sports in general and sports broadcasting in particular. Today, I can confidently say that we have become the home of Indian sports. The Sports business now has world class properties and assets like the IPL, PKL (Pro Kabaddi League), ISL (Indian Super League), regional and various other international sports which are serving consumers across geographies. We are committed to growing and investing in our sports network including strengthening the sports leadership team.”
Thakar brings over 20 years of deep operating and leadership experience. He started his career as a brand manager with P&G in India, then led e-commerce company baazee.com as a founding management team member in India (acquired by eBay in 2004).
He spent 10 years at eBay in a variety of leadership roles (country manager for eBay India, global marketing leader for eBay’s international markets as well as leader of eBay’s multi-billion dollar cross border business, CEO of shopping.com (an eBay acquisition) and general manager responsible for building a multi hundred million dollar adtech business) before leading the turnaround at LivingSocial (acquired by Groupon).
Image courtesy: Fortune.com
