Walt Disney gives leadership positions to Sanjay Gupta, K Madhavan

Uday Shankar announces the APAC leadership reshuffle through an internal email.

After finalising the 21st Century Fox acquisition last month, The Walt Disney Company has announced a reshuffle in its APAC leadership team. Disney had already announced, a few months back, that Uday Shankar would lead the APAC business for the Disney-Fox merger.

Uday Shankar, chairman, Star and Disney India and president, The Walt Disney Co. Asia Pacific, in an internal statement announcing the recent restructure, said Sanjay Gupta will be the Country Manager of India and will also have direct responsibility for the studio business in the country. When it comes to Star Regional Media Networks, K Madhavan will lead Star India’s regional language Media Networks.

Shankar, in his letter, wrote, “It is a momentous opportunity to be able to chart the course of The Walt Disney Company in Asia Pacific and the Middle East. While our region is experiencing tremendous change, the common thread that binds it together is the exciting opportunity it presents to build on the great businesses that we have today and create transformational businesses of tomorrow. My endeavour is to build an organisation that enables us to take full advantage of this unique opportunity and capitalise on the potential of the great leadership talent that we have in the region.”

He added, “We recognise the need for a sharp focus on building deeply local businesses. To achieve this, we are making some changes to the current market structure. This will allow us to serve the strategic agenda in each market and enable our exceptional leaders to build even greater and more successful businesses. Above all, this will facilitate our transformation into a direct-to-consumer company that rests on deep local foundations. With these objectives, I am proud to announce the DTCI APAC leadership team.”

Shankar concluded his letter by saying, “Our true strength comes from the quality and diversity of our talent, which combines the best of both Disney and 21st Century Fox. I am privileged to lead a team of such exceptional leaders and congratulate all of them on getting this exciting opportunity to lead this great company to an even greater destiny.”

Here is the full list as announced by Uday Shankar:

Business Leads and Country Managers:

• North Asia: Luke Kang will continue to lead the North Asia (Greater China, Japan and Korea) business including direct country management of Mainland China and Japan

• India: Sanjay Gupta will be Country Manager of India and will also have direct responsibility for the studio business in the country

• Star Regional Media Networks: K Madhavan will lead Star India’s regional language Media Networks

• Southeast Asia: Zubin Gandevia, after a long and distinguished career with Fox, has decided to leave the company, but has agreed to remain for a period of time to help transition the leadership of media networks in Southeast Asia

• Emerging Markets & Content Sales: Amit Malhotra will lead Emerging Markets. He will also lead Content Sales for APAC (except North Asia), with a dual reporting to Janice Marinelli who heads DTCI’s Global Content Sales and Distribution

• Middle East: Chafic Najia will be Country Manager of Middle East Media cluster

• Australia/New Zealand (ANZ): Kylie Watson-Wheeler will continue to serve as Country Manager of Australian and New Zealand business with direct responsibility for Media Networks and Direct-to-Consumer

• Studios APAC: Kurt Rieder will lead the Studio business for APAC (except India). He will work closely with the regional business leaders to drive this business

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Functional Leads:

• Sanjay Jain will lead Finance

• Amita Maheshwari will lead Human Resources

• Anju Jain Kumar will be the Chief Regional Counsel for North Asia and ANZ

• Deepak Jacob will be the Chief Regional Counsel for India, South East Asia and the Middle East

• Prateek Garg will manage my office as head of Corporate Development and will work closely with me and all business and functional heads

• Jessica Pouleur will lead Strategy and Business Development. She will also take interim responsibility of leading strategy for Southeast Asia

• Jannie Poon will head Corporate Communications