STAR India has appointed Bharti Airtel’s Chief Marketing Officer Sanjay Gupta as its Chief Operating Officer. Gupta will join the company in the next couple of weeks.
The previous COO, Jagdish Kumar, will now be responsible for heading the recently created joint venture between STAR India and the Jupiter Group STAR Jupiter in the south. He will continue to report to STAR India CEO Uday Shankar.
All STAR GM’s will report to Gupta, who will be based in Mumbai.
Shankar confirmed the development, “Sanjay is joining us as the COO, and he has been looking at the media business from the other side of the fence. I believe this cross-pollination of talent is important for the media business, and the business has suffered so far from the lack of it.”
On Gupta’s non-media background, Shankar said, “The fundamentals of business remain the same everywhere. I came to an entertainment business with absolutely no previous experience in this domain. I am a big believer that influx of talent cannot be watertight.”
Gupta has more than eighteen years’ experience in key marketing and sales functions. He joins STAR from Bharti Airtel, where he was responsible for driving marketing, sales and distribution for the $6 bn mobile business. Before Bharti, he played a key marketing role in Hindustan Unilever in various functions such as Oral care and Home care divisions. He has driven strong brands such as Close-up, Pepsodent, Wheel, Vim and Domex.