Amit Tripathi to join News Express as COO

The news channel has also appointed Anuj Dwivedi as vice-president, distribution.

News Express has brought on board Amit Tripathi, out-going sales head of India News, as chief operating officer.

Tripathi tells afaqs! that Saturday was his last day at India News and he will take up the new role at News Express on Monday, January 20.

Based in the Delhi-NCR region, Tripathi will report to Vinod Kapri, who recently joined News Express as CEO and editor-in-chief.

The news channel has also appointed Anuj Dwivedi as vice-president, distribution. However, Dwivedi was not available for comment while filing this report.

The announcement comes close on the heels of Satish K Singh's appointment as consulting editor of News Express. The three year old Hindi news channel has lately been on a hiring spree. It also appointed Zee News' Paritosh Chaturvedi as deputy executive editor.

Tripathi adds, "I was handling just one part of the business before this. But the new role in News Express will enable me to take care of larger managerial responsibilities. Expansion is in the pipeline for News Express and we will announce the details later."

The market grapevine has it that the company's expansion plan includes an upcoming Marathi news channel.

Before joining India News, Tripathi had set up Cent Percent Media Solutions, an outsourcing advertising sales organisation with its core focus on regional and niche TV channels, with former Zee News CEO Barun Das.

Tripathi handled sales for India News while being in Cent Percent Media and later he joined India News as sales head.

Before Cent Percent Media, Tripathi was with Zee News. He had joined the Zee Network company in January, 2006 as SVP, sales and was later promoted as EVP, sales in April 2008. He quit the company in February, 2013. He had earlier also worked with Times Television Network's Zoom (as regional manager), Sahara TV (as senior manager), Satyam Infoways (as regional manager) and Zee Telefilms (as assistant vice-president).