Akhil Bhalla joins NDTV as Product Head to lead Live and Connected TV

New Delhi: NDTV has appointed Akhil Bhalla as Product Head – Live & Connected TV, tasking him with driving the network’s connected devices roadmap across India and international markets.

In the role, Bhalla will lead product strategy for Live and Connected TV initiatives, with a focus on building scalable connected TV experiences across platforms.

The mandate sits at the intersection of product, content, technology and monetisation. Priorities include watch time, engagement and AVOD-led growth, alongside editorial integrity and content moderation standards.

Bhalla joins NDTV after a long stint across streaming and television news.

His LinkedIn profile notes experience spanning journalism organisations such as the BBC, Reuters and VOA. It also outlines OTT work covering content, product, data, legal and monetisation, including discovery, engagement loops, recommendations and subscriber growth.

Before NDTV, Bhalla was AVP at JioHotstar (formerly Disney+Hotstar) from October 2017 to May 2023. He credits himself with building Hotstar’s news ecosystem from the ground up, aggregating and curating over 45 national and regional news channels across languages into a unified platform experience.

The stint also covered news as a product, partnerships with broadcasters and creators, and integrating live news, clips and VOD with targeted notifications to improve discovery and engagement.

He was Editor (Output) at Zee News from January to November 2013. Bhalla also spent over a decade at TV Today’s Aaj Tak from December 2000 to August 2012, with responsibilities including output and anchor management, and serving as the single point for ad-sales interaction.

Bhalla is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication and Delhi University.