Asianet News Media & Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. (AMEL), headquartered in Bengaluru, has announced that Rajesh Kalra will join its board as Executive Chairman.
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AMEL has multiple digital brands in its portfolio, including asianetnews.com, indigomusic.com etc., and serves consumers in multiple languages.
Kalra was the Chief Editor of Times Internet, the repository of everything digital of The Times of India Group, from June 2006 to August 2020. He was also an entrepreneur from 2000-2006 when his company managed the dynamic portions of websites such as Yahoo India, MSN India, Mantra Online and started India’s first 24*7 news website, NaradOnline.
During his stint at Times Internet, where he became the youngest Chief Editor at the age of 40, he was instrumental in the launch of almost all the news and entertainment properties of the group — TOI, ET, Mumbai Mirror, Bangalore Mirror, Ahmedabad Mirror, Pune Mirror, NBT, MT, Indiatimes, Ei Samay, I am Gujarat, Vijay Karnataka and the three Samayam properties (Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam).
Kalra started his career with the computer publication, Dataquest, and had stints with the print editions of the Times of India, Business Standard and The Economic Times.
His move to digital happened after ET, when he became the first Editor of Times Interactive in 1999, before he moved on as an entrepreneur.
Kalra is an avid sportsperson, a trained high-altitude mountaineer, a marathoner and a mountain biker who rode twice from Manali to Leh. He has been the member of Prime Minister’s Olympic Task Force and the All India Council of Sports. He is also a non-motorised transport evangelist and is a founder Trustee of the ‘Raahgiri’ Foundation.
Abhinav Khare, Chief Executive Officer, said, “I am very happy that Kalra is joining this team. He will add significant leadership capability to our company and the entire team, and I am excited to be working with him and growing our company even faster.”