Network18 elevates Ganesh Iyer to Chief Marketing Officer

Ganesh Iyer has been elevated as the Chief Marketing Officer for Network18. In his expanded role as the CMO, Ganesh will become the strategic backbone of the company's Branded Content, IP and Marketing agenda across the organisation.

He will work closely with the leadership teams across business clusters and brands (EBN, ILC, News18 Studio, Firstpost, Moneycontrol, Network18 Connected & Creator18) to make the marketing — and therefore the wider business — bigger, bolder and better.

Marketing heads across our different brands will have a dotted-line reporting relationship to Ganesh, enabling stronger collaboration and a more integrated approach to brand strategy and marketing.

Ganesh will also continue to guide a specialised central unit led by Sharmistha Gupta that will focus on big new ideas, strategic pitches and brand initiatives across all businesses. Sharmistha will continue to report to Ganesh. The creative and promo teams under Aman and Sonali will continue to work under the supervision of Ganesh.

Previously, as the Chief Brand Officer, Ganesh has been guiding the marketing teams to enrich, protect and preserve the company's wide and varied bouquet of news brands. He and his team have also brought flair to the creative thinking that goes into our campaigns and branded content initiatives.

Mihir Bhatt, who joined the company in April as the Chief Content Officer for News18 Studio, has taken on an expanded remit as Chief Content Officer for Branded Content. In this role, he will lead Branded Content initiatives across the News18 Studio, EBN and ILC teams. With his expertise in the creation of marquee IPs and in revenue innovation, Mihir will now support Mitul and Smriti while continuing to report to Shiv for the News18 Studio business.

To foster greater collaboration from start to finish, a subset of the central ideation team led by Rahul Thagele will move to work directly with Mihir. By placing the ideas team alongside Studios, we expect to create a single thread of ownership, thus also improving turnaround times.

These changes will allow Ganesh to operate at a more strategic and organisation-wide level, while giving Shiv, Mihir and the Studios team greater ownership of the journey from ideas to implementation.