Kumud Chaudhary, Head of Fiction for 9X, the Hindi general entertainment channel from INX Media, resigned yesterday.
She has been replaced by Vikas Varma, who will also continue in his role as Content and Business Head, 9XM. INX Media’s VP, Corporate and Channel PR, Pavan Chawla confirmed these developments.
Chaudhary has not yet announced her next destination. At INX Media, she was also assigned the duties of the regional general entertainment channels that included Punjabi, Bengali and Marathi. Recruitments for the Punjabi channel and the Bengali channel have already been made. However, the plans for these channels slowed down in the last few months. Even now, INX Media, has not made any comment on these channels.
Kumud Chaudhary was one of the first names to join the channel in 2007, as its Head of Fiction. Sharmistha Gupta was brought in as the non-fiction head of the channel but did not stay for long. After Gupta’s exit, Vikas Varma began looking after the non-fiction for 9X. He was also involved with some of the fiction shows of the channel like ‘Ajeeb’ and ‘Kismet ka Khel’, both produced by Bonnie Jain.
In addition to Chaudhary, Kevin Darcy has moved back to Australia. He was working in the Operations department at INX Media. It is also understood that Richard Platt, who was in a programming role at INX Media, is not coming back. However, channel officials have stated that Platt is still working with the organisation.
INX sources say that these are just some of the names that are exiting the channel, and that more exits are expected. Although these speculations have been dismissed by INX officials, this may not be the last we hear from INX on this front.