In a move to strengthen its content team and to diversify its revenue streams, Hathway is restructuring its Content vertical by expanding the role of Shirish Ruparel, Executive Vice President- Content & VAS with the growing demands of the business. In his expanded role, Ruparel will continue to report to T.S. Panesar, President-Video Business and his portfolio will now include Content and Carriage, Ad sales, OTT service offerings and value added services as Hathway looks to create new revenue streams in the new digitization era.
Commenting on this restructuring, Jagdish Kumar, MD & CEO, Hathway Cable & Datacom Limited said, “Shirish Ruparel has been one of the key members of the senior management and contributed immensely towards the building of our Content team. We are expanding his role to utilize his vast experience & expertise in building wider content revenue streams in segments like OTT and VAS.”
As part of his expanded role, Ruparel would now oversee content and carriage and Ad sales monetization while also develop Hathways’ in-house channel bouquet into a series of strong Pan-India and regional channels and improve the content portfolio for in-house and regional channel base by working with leading production and content providers. Additionally, he will also be responsible to grow the value pie of Hathway across new streams such as OTT (Over-the-top TV) services and offers and diversify the business into segments such as VAS (value-added services) including VOD (video-on demand), mobile streaming, EPG amongst other key monetization initiatives.
Hathway has also taken on-board N.M. Rao as Head-Content and Carriage to handle All-India content and carriage w.e.f 4th April 2016, based at their corporate office in Mumbai and reporting to Ruparel. Rao joins Hathway from Star India where he was working as Assistant Vice President-Affiliate Sales looking after Carriage and Content for key MSO accounts as part of the broadcasters’ distribution set-up.
“We are also pleased to have N.M Rao on-board with us to look after Content & Carriage as we aim to create a strong vertical with multiple revenue streams that will set the business in the new fiscal. With his vast experience in distribution, content & carriage with Star, we are extremely confident that N.M will provide the right boost to our overall objectives and set new benchmarks,” added Kumar.
Having an experience of around 15+ years, Rao has been a part of the media and broadcast industry for more than a decade having worked across both Print and Electronic Media in the areas of Affiliate Sales with Star TV (Content, Carriage, Trade Marketing) and Advertising Sales with Times of India (Print & Special Projects). As part of hisnew role, Rao will be responsible for negotiation & management of all content deals with broadcasters, both for content & carriage.
