MUMBAI: Nitin Kukreja, former CEO of Star Sports, is ending his sabbatical to take over as chief executive of IQuest Enterprises Private Limited, the investment company that handles all the businesses of serial entrepreneur Nimmagadda Prasad.
Kukreja, who finished a 10-year stint at Star India, where in his last role, he was CEO of Star Sports, takes up his new position in IQuest Enterprises on January 8, 2018. Kukreja announced his resignation from Star India in November 2016 and officially left India’s leading entertainment network on March 31.
Prasad is best known for having acquired Matrix Laboratories Limited, built it up into a $1.03 billion enterprise, before selling it to US-based Mylan Inc. in 2006. He subsequently acquired Telugu general entertainment channel network Maa TV in 2006 before selling it off to Star India. Both transactions to US listed entities, were the highest valued transactions in the respective industries at that point of time.
Currently, I Quest Enterprises’ investment portfolio includes sports, pharmaceuticals, technology, hospitality and infrastructure.
For the record, Prasad’s first association with sports was in 2003, when as part of his philanthropic activities, he donated Rs 50 million to India’s most celebrated badminton coach Pullela Gopichand to set up his famed academy in Hyderabad.
Today Prasad co-owns three sports franchises and has partnered cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, cine star Chiranjeevi and film producer and distributor Allu Aravind in all of them. The three franchises are the Kochi-based Indian Super League club Kerala Blasters, ProKabaddi League team Tamil Thalaivas and Premier Badminton League side Bengaluru Blasters.
Coming back to Kukreja, in four years at Star Sports, he 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.
In 2015, Kukreja was selected by the Economic Times and Spencer Stuart in the “40 under Forty: India’s hottest business leaders” list of young leaders under the age of 40.
