RIL-Disney JV: New division heads announced

The much awaited joint venture between Reliance Industries Limited’s Viacom18 and Disney’s Star India has been completed and become effective. The companies announced that the JV has been approved by the NCLT Mumbai, Competition Commission of India and other regulatory bodies.

The new Star India will be led by Kevin Vaz, Kiran Mani and Sanjog Gupta.

Amid these developments, Star India has announced division heads post-merger.

As per the new structure, Piyush Goyal will be the Head of TV Distribution. Sumit Grover will helm Cable, DTH & Growth.

Amit Shah will be in charge of the Linear TV Distribution Strategy and partnering with the Sports Strategy team. Bindu Nair has been entrusted with Distribution Marketing.

Ajit Varghese will be the Head of Revenue, Entertainment & International. Under him, Mahesh Shetty will head LCS client engagement and cross-screen leverage. Dhruv Dhawan, Digital Growth for mid-tier/ emerging clients with a regional focus. Shubra Sethi, Kingshuk Mitra and Sudhir Nagpal are the other members in Varghese’s team.

Ishan Chatterjee will be the Head of Business, Sports Revenue, SMB & Creator. Under him will be Anup Govindan, Arup Bansal, Sunil Pasricha, Radhe Shyam Adidam, Kanishk Khanna and Saurabh Mishra.

Alok Jain has been named Head of Cluster, Entertainment (Colors, Digital Hindi, Niche, Movies and Studios). Vivek Srivastava, Arnab Das, Rohan Lavsi, Anu Sikka, Anshul Ailawadi, Ajit Andhare, Shital Iyer and Prachi Sahay will be reporting to him.

Krishnan Kutty has been appointed Head of Cluster, Entertainment (South). His team comprises Sushma Rajesh, Balachandran R, Raghava Vaidyula, Kishan Kumar, Himabindu Chitta and Prachi Mohapatra.

Sumanta Bose will be the Head of Cluster, Entertainment (Star Plus and Bharat, Bengali, Marathi and Gujrati). His team will have Deepak Chhabria, Harsh Sheth, Koustuvi Ghosh, Vivek Modi, Vipul Nagar, Satish Rajwade, Pratik Parmimi and Arnab Deb.

The merger of the media and JioCinema businesses of Viacom18 into Star India Private Limited has become effective on November 14.

he JV has allotted shares to Viacom18 and RIL as consideration for the assets and cash, respectively.

The transaction values the JV at Rs 70,352 crore (US$ 8.5 billion) on a post-money basis, excluding synergies. At the closing of the transactions noted above, the JV is controlled by RIL and owned 16.34% by RIL, 46.82% by Viacom18 and 36.84% by Disney.

Nita M. Ambani will be the Chairperson of the JV, with Uday Shankar as Vice Chairperson providing strategic guidance to the JV.

The JV is home to the most iconic and engaging media brands in India across TV and digital platforms. The combination of ‘Star’ and ‘Colors’ on the television side and ‘JioCinema’ and ‘Hotstar’ on the digital front will provide extensive choice of content across entertainment and sports to viewers in India and globally.

The formation of the JV will herald a new era in India’s entertainment industry for consumers. This unique joint venture of Reliance and Disney brings together the companies’ content creation and curation prowess, world-class digital streaming capabilities along with a digital first approach that will help the JV deliver unparallelled content choices at affordable prices to Indian viewers and the Indian diaspora globally.

The JV will be one of the largest Media & Entertainment companies in India with pro forma combined revenue of approximately Rs 26,000 crore (US$ 3.1 billion) for the fiscal year ended in March 2024. The JV operates over 100 TV channels and produces 30,000+ hours of TV entertainment content annually. The JioCinema and Hotstar digital platforms have an aggregate subscription base of over 50 million. The JV holds a portfolio of sports rights across cricket, football and other sports.

Ambuj Kashyap will work directly with Vice Chairperson Uday Shankar and partner with CEOs on strategic and business initiatives. Rishi Gaind will be the Head of Human Resources. George Cherian will be the Head of Corporate Communications & PR. Sandeep Jain to take charge as Head of Commercial. Sushant Sreeram will be the Head of Marketing. Hursh Shrivastava will be the Head of Partnerships. Rasesh Upadhyay will work directly with Kevin to drive Entertainment business strategy and operations.