Imagining the Future

An M.Phil graduate, specialising in Economic History, from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, Uday began his professional life as a political journalist. Prior to Star, Uday was the CEO and Editor of Media Content and Communications Services, which operated Star News. He was also Editor and News Director at the TV Today Group, where he led the launch of Aaj Tak in 2000 and Headlines Today in 2003.

In addition to his leadership of Star, Uday is a leading voice of the media and broadcasting industry in the country, shaping reforms for the industry and its consumers. As the former President of the Indian Broadcasting Federation (IBF) and the current Chairman of the FICCI Media & Entertainment Committee, Uday has been at the forefront of landmark changes in self-regulation and pushing access for consumers to digitized distribution.

Sanjay's working style contributes to our culture of challenging status quo. This has led to making us India's first media company with a completely digitized back end, introducing multiple technology initiatives and enabling digital video delivery with starsports.com and Hotstar. And Sanjay isn’t stopping there.

A post graduate from IIM Kolkata, Sanjay has more than 20 years of experience across various aspects of marketing and sales in major consumer industries. Before Star, he was the Chief Marketing Officer of Bharti Airtel, running marketing, sales and distribution for India's leading mobile services operator. Prior to Airtel, Sanjay worked at Hindustan Unilever for 16 years, where he led the marketing activities for two of the company's largest segments, Oral Care and Home Care. Sanjay is always searching for new efficiencies, embracing new technologies and helping us tell the stories we’re loved for.

Madhavan has been instrumental in transforming Asianet as the undisputed leader in Malayalam by acquiring more than 50 percent of the market share. Under his trusted leadership, the channel has been taken to more than 100 countries.

Madhavan believes in the entrepreneurial culture. His vision has led us to set benchmarks in quality programming in the South, which is now being replicated throughout India. Prior to his media career, Madhavan was into banking and corporate finance. In 1999, he joined Asianet Communications Ltd. as Director and took charge of the company as the MD and CEO in 2000. Madhavan joined Star as South Head in 2008 after Star acquired Asianet. He is also Director of IBF and the President of Kerala Television Federation.

Madhavan's leadership style has proven invaluable in growing the South business of Star.

Prior to joining Star India, Sanjay was Vice President – Service Delivery at Genpact overseeing a team of 300+ employees delivering high end financial operations. He also spent considerable time with GE Capital Services handling various assignments in controllership, financial planning and analysis, acquisition integration, across continents.

Sanjay holds a CA from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Ajit is championing Star’s ambition to use technology to re-invent the world of media and to build outstanding services for digital consumers. His career has been truly global, beginning with his work to create new telecommunication companies and services in Southeast Asia in the late 1990s to supporting the growth of media companies in the Americas and Europe in the next decade.

Ajit has a passion for public policy and believes in the power of democratic governments, enabled by a free media to trigger positive change in the world. Between 2008 and 2010, he spent two years as a Fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute creating a road-map for urban transformation in India, co-authoring 'India’s Urban Awakening: Building Inclusive Cities, Sustaining Economic Growth', still cited as the most credible study on how India can create a new cycle of matching rapid growth with renewal of its cities.

Ajit is an alumni of McKinsey and Company's New York office. His first degree was in Computer Engineering at NTU in Singapore where he managed to graduate without writing much code or designing any hardware that functioned. He is a graduate of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an India board member of the Mobile Marketing Association and the Chairman of IAMAI’s Entertainment Sub Committee.

Amit joined Star in 2013 to lead sales. A year later, he took on the role of Revenue Head, managing profits for distribution and ad sales. Post that, he was CEO of Entertainment at Star, overseeing the business delivery of our entertainment channels - drama and movie channels in Hindi, English, Bengali and Marathi.

In his prior role, Amit was instrumental in shaping the vision for ‘Hindustan’ - the third largest newspaper in India as the CEO of Hindustan Media Ventures. Under his leadership, ‘Hindustan’ earned its reputation of neutrality and progressiveness while being a profitable publication.

Amit studied engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Post his MBA, Amit spent more than a decade at Hindustan Unilever Limited across marketing and sales.

In 2011, Kevin took over the premiere Bengali channel, Star Jalsha as General Manager and catapulted Jalsha into breaking its own ratings record with 'Chalo Paltai'. Kevin moved to lead the English channels cluster in 2013 where his role was to grow the English segment, especially in the light of digitization. Under his leadership, Star Movies Select HD was launched. In 2015, he took on the role of leading Hindi entertainment which includes Star Plus, and Star Utsav. Kevin started his career with The Times Of India Response as Senior Officer in 1992.

Prior to this role, Vijay was President, Strategy & Corporate Development, and was responsible for developing new business strategy and overseeing Star’s joint venture businesses in India. Before joining Star India in April 2007, he was Managing Director - Developing Markets with the Tetley Group, London and was responsible for developing the Tetley brand across emerging markets including Russia, Eastern Europe, South Africa and South Asia. Vijay set up Sony Music Entertainment in India where he was responsible for setting up and then managing the growth plans of Sony’s music business as the Managing Director from 1996 to 2002. Prior to this, he worked with The Unilever Group, Walt Disney Consumer Products and the Tata Group as part of the Tata Administrative Services.

Gautam brings over 20 years of experience in global leadership roles across Asia, Europe and the US in startups and multinational consumer and internet businesses. In his last role as President & CEO of Living Social in the US, he led the turnaround of the business leading to an acquisition by Groupon. Prior to that Gautam spent a decade at eBay in a variety of executive roles based in California. This included leading the global marketing team for eBay’s international business, managing eBay’s multibillion-dollar cross-border business, transforming a global subsidiary company called Shopping.com as CEO into a large ad tech player. Gautam started his career with Procter & Gamble where he was a regional brand manager for detergents based out of India and the Philippines.

Gautam is a passionate sports fan who doesn’t let his limited athletic prowess get in the way of his conviction in the power of sport to inspire and shape future generations. Gautam has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow and a Bachelor’s in Commerce from Sydenham College, Mumbai.

Amita is an Electronics & Telecom engineer with a specialization in Human Resources from XLRI. Before Star, she has worked in diverse organizations such as Asian Paints, GE Capital, Genpact and MetLife India Insurance. Amita also provides pro-bono support to Care India, an international NGO.

Deepak played a significant role in the digitization of the analog TV industry resulting in unlocking of subscribers and revenues. He was one of the brains behind creating the self-regulatory mechanism for TV content i.e. the The Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC) for addressing consumer grievances and also preventing the government from censoring television content.

Deepak has been a part of Star’s growth story and the acquisitions of Asianet, ESPN Star Sports, Maa TV, creation of media pro and the launch of Hotstar. Prior to Star, Deepak served as the Head of Legal for eBay India, where he was responsible for managing risk and driving growth of the e-commerce platform. Previously, Deepak was the Senior Legal Counsel at Reliance Infocomm supporting the Broadband & Corporate Wireless division in building a successful business of bundled telecom services.

Deepak is an alumnus of University of Madras and has spent considerable time as a litigation lawyer in Delhi High Court.

Gaurav became the Head of Content Strategy at Star Plus in October 2009 and was responsible for widely popular shows like 'Diya aur Baati Hum' and 'Sasural Genda Phool'. In his earlier years at Star, Gaurav anchored and executive produced Star News’ flagship 9 PM news show, 'Satyamev Jayate'. He was also responsible for launching Star Ananda which became the agenda setting news channel in Bengal. Gaurav believes that good stories provide context. It comes from his experience of being a journalist with Aaj Tak in 2000. As an anchor, he covered the Afghan war and the General Elections.

Gayatri is now leading an agenda on Consumer Strategy and Innovation with a focus on Brand and Marketing Strategy and Big Data and Analytics for future growth. Gayatri's passion for consumers, brands and the incredible impact we have on society keeps the team at Star always inspired.

Gayatri has over 20 years of experience in Marketing across Consumer Products and Media. Gayatri started her career in Procter and Gamble in Brand Management working across categories and brands and later joined General Mills where as Chief Marketing Officer she was responsible for launching Pillsbury and developing a strong and differentiated portfolio of brands creating multiple categories in the then nascent packaged foods market. An alumni of Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, Gayatri has been recognized as one of 'India's Best Brand Builders', the leading 'Marketer in Media and Entertainment' in India, 'India's Best CMO' and one of the 'top 50 most successful women leaders' in India. Gayatri is happiest when tasked with big, audacious challenges with large potential for impact.

Gurjeev believes in delivering. He believes that the right mix of people, passion and vision can turn things around and deliver success for a business. In his current role, Gurjeev has created efficiency in the market and improved the business yield. He has also opened new markets with the syndication business and increased the business footprint through deeper reach and new subscribers. Gurjeev moved to London to lead the International Business for Star after a stint at MediaPro India (JV between Star & Zee) as the COO - managing India’s biggest distribution portfolio across 68 channels. In his role at MediaPro, Gurjeev worked with industry stakeholders to address the anomalies of the analog market and doubled the revenue in just three years.

He has played an invaluable role in curbing piracy and accelerating the pace of digitization to bring greater transparency in the business. He is an experienced industry veteran, with 22 years in media across destination channels such as ESPN, Star Sports, Discovery & Sony.

Gurjeev is a mechanical engineer from Delhi College of Engineering and holds an MBA from Faculty of Management Studies. He is also an avid sports player.

Before joining Star, Ipsita was the Chief Commercial Officer of GE South Asia and Greater China where she was responsible for marketing, strategy, new product and solutions, and strategic customer accounts across GE businesses. She led ‘In India for India’ growth programs, sales force effectiveness for the region, and was responsible for GE Bangladesh.

Prior to joining GE, Ipsita was Managing Director, Smart Connected Communities – Emerging Businesses at IBM. Her key responsibilities included developing business opportunities in Emerging Markets with a specific focus on the global, emerging middle class. Ipsita then joined Cisco, where she worked since 2002, bringing multi-faceted experience heading emerging markets strategy, marketing and in building and leading strategic business and consulting competencies at company-wide and regional levels.

Ipsita holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Economics from Columbia University, and a Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.