Amit Goenka, who has been spearheading the streaming business, will take direct charge of original content, including movies, besides assuming additional charge of the international broadcast business, enterprise technology, and broadcast operations & engineering. He will continue to report to Punit.
ZEEL, which has four key business segments, namely broadcast, digital, movies, and music, has also elevated key executives. The reorganisation is in line with the company’s aim of achieving 18–20% EBITDA margin by FY26.
Ashish Sehgal will be responsible for integrated ad sales for the broadcast and digital businesses. In this enhanced role, he will also report to Amit for digital business revenue. He will continue to report to Punit for the broadcast business revenue.
Siju Prabhakaran, who leads the South cluster of channels, will take additional responsibility for the West cluster. Samrat Ghosh, the current head of the East cluster of channels, will take additional responsibility for the North and Premium clusters.
Ruchir Tiwari will continue to lead the Hindi Movies cluster, while Vishnu Shankar will continue to lead Hindi GEC &TV and the FTA segment.Following the exit of Zee Studios CEO Shariq Patel, Umesh Bansal will lead the movie business. Anurag Bedi will continue to lead the music business and enhance the vertical’s contribution to the company’s bottom line.The reorganisation comes in the wake of the collapse of the merger deal with Sony Group Corp’s India entities and the exit of senior executives like Rahul Johri (president-business), Punit Misra (president-content), and Nitin Mittal (president-technology).
The company has decided to lay off 15% of its more than 4,500 employees to reduce costs.
ZEEL Chairman R. Gopalan said the board has reviewed and approved the lean organisation structure proposed by Punit, which aims at streamlining the organisation and improving efficiencies across the business.
“The strong and capable set of leaders identified for each core business segment in the lateral structure is highly reflective of the company’s deep bench strength and ensures that the company remains well-positioned for the future,” he added.
Punit said the new structure encompasses a more resilient team for the organisation to ensure agility and collaboration. “Through this restructuring exercise, our aim has been to build an independent and enterprising team led by an experienced set of leaders to drive the company forward.”
