K Madhavan, President, The Walt Disney Company India and Star India, in an internal communication to the staff, announced a realignment of current business structure aiming at accelerating the growth agenda.
Kevin Vaz, who has played an instrumental role in the growth of the Regional Entertainment network, has been appointed Head of Entertainment. In his expanded role, Vaz will have the P&L responsibility for the entire entertainment channel business including Regional channels, Kids & Infotainment, Star Plus, Star Bharat, Star Utsav, Hindi Movies and the English cluster.
In addition to his existing channel GM direct reports, Sumanta Bose, Arpit Mankar and Hemal Jhaveri will now report to him. Also, Arghya Chakravarty will have a dotted line reporting to Vaz for HSM Ad Sales in addition to his current reporting to Nitin Bawankule.
To align Disney India’s structure with the global direct-to-consumer business and growth strategy, the company is set to create a separate powerhouse for content creation.
Gaurav Banerjee as Head of Content will now lead Content for the HSM Entertainment Network, Disney+ Hotstar and Regional content for OTT and will own the viewership responsibility for the same.
The Content heads for all Hindi channels and Nikhil Madhok will continue to report into Banerjee for HSM content development and D+H originals respectively. Hemal Jhaveri will have a dotted line reporting to Banerjee for digital movie rights and also Dhawal Gusain & Regional Channel GMs for D+H content.