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In an internal memo, accessed by ET, Shankar wrote that December 27th will be Gupta’s last working day in the company. “In order to create minimum disruption to the business, I have decided K Madhavan, who has built out regional entertainment business, will now look after all our TV businesses across markets and verticals,” Shankar wrote.
All the senior executives who used to report to Gupta, except those of Hotstar, will now report to Madhavan, who, in turn will report to Shankar.
K Madhavan, former head of Asianet, the Malayalam entertainment network that Star India acquired, is an old hand at Star. In 2016 reshuffle, when Star India divided business under 5 different verticals – Madhavan was named managing director – South.
Shankar further added that for the time being, he will have “direct oversight” on Hotstar and the leadership of the streaming service will directly report to him. In earlier arrangement, Hotstar and film studio business also reported into Gupta. However, since exit of Ajit Mohan last year, Hotstar’s CEO positing has been lying vacant.
The film studio of the company is headed by Vijay Singh.
Shankar also announced that Nitin Bawankule, who has recently taken charge of ad-sales for Hindi speaking markets (HSM), sports and Hotstar, will have dual reporting – Madhavan for HSM and sports and Shankar for Hotstar sales.
Earlier this week, Hotstar disclosed its viewership numbers, claiming that the app has been downloaded for over 400 million times and during cricket tournaments, it reaches to over 300 million users. The company also claimed of having 200 million monthly active users. Many industry experts felt that the viewership report by Hotstar was its attempt to show to the advertisers its popularity and ramp up advertising revenues. Hotstar reported a net loss of Rs 558.38 crore on a revenue of Rs 1,112.74 crore in FY’19.
Overall, Star India posted a net loss of Rs 1,216.13 crore in FY’19, while its revenue from operations stood at Rs 12,341 crore.
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