Star India appoints Gautam Thakar as Chief Executive Officer for Star Sports

Star India Managing Director Sanjay Gupta, announced the appointment of Gautam Thakar as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) - Star Sports. In his new role, Gautam will lead the sports broadcast business as its Chief Executive Officer. His appointment is effective January 2018.

Sanjay Gupta commented “We are happy to welcome Gautam into the Star India family to lead our next paradigm in sports broadcasting. He brings to the table a wealth of knowledge and proven strategic capabilities. We at Star have always set ourselves a bold growth agenda and we are confident that Gautam will contribute in taking the multi-sports culture that Star has pioneered in India, to the next level.”

Gautam brings over 20 years of deep operating and leadership experience. He started his career as a brand manager with P&G in India, then led baazee.com as a founding management team member to become the No. 1 e-commerce company in India (acquired by eBay in 2004).

He spent 10 years at eBay in a variety of leadership roles (Country Manager for eBay India, global marketing leader for eBay’s International markets as well as leader of eBay’s multi-billion dollar cross border business, CEO of shopping.com (an eBay acquisition) and general manager responsible for building a multi hundred million dollar Adtech business) before leading the turnaround at LivingSocial (acquired by Groupon).

Gautam has an MBA from IIM, Lucknow and prior to that a Bachelor’s in Commerce from Sydenham College, Mumbai.