STAR's Neville Bastawalla joins Sony Pix

Bastawalla will report to Saurabh Yagnik, executive vice-president and business head, Sony Pix.

Sony Pix, the English movie channel from Multi Screen Media (MSM), recently appointed Neville Bastawalla as vice-president, marketing. Until recently, he was with STAR India as marketing head, English channels.

Bastawalla will head the marketing of the channel and report to Saurabh Yagnik, executive vice-president and business head, Sony Pix.

Yagnik says, "We are certain that Bastawalla's experience and understanding of the business and our audience will help us consolidate our position in the genre."

Bastawalla has about 14 years of experience in the industry, having started his career in 1999 after completing a Masters degree in management studies from University of Mumbai.

Bastawalla comments, "Sony Pix has always uniquely positioned itself in the English movie genre, with a strong content library and innovative campaigns for its premieres and other properties. I look forward to taking up this role and delivering on the business objectives for the channel."

He began his career in account management with Advertising Avenues in 1999. Later, he joined Mudra in 2000 and worked there for three years before moving to Contract Advertising for two years.

He spent about eight years in the advertising and marketing industry before moving to television. Some of the brands he has worked on during his days in advertising include Cadbury's, Godrej, Kinetic and Reliance Infocomm.

In his next stint, he switched to marketing and joined the Disney channel in 2004. He was instrumental in launching the channel and stayed associated with the organisation for two years. After Disney, Bastawalla joined Nickelodeon for a short stint of nine months before moving to Mid Day as marketing head in 2007. Bastawalla then moved on to STAR India to handle marketing for its English channels, which included STAR World and STAR Movies. He was later assigned to handle STAR Gold.