Zee Entertainment restructures most valuable assets

Anurag Basu - Televisionpoint.com | Mumbai
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL) has announced the creation of Operational Building Blocks (OBB), which will be headed by chief operating officers (COOs) of various units to tap into new business opportunities. With these OBB's, the company has restructured its most valuable assets, the human resources.

ZEEL has identified four key existing and potential businesses to be headed by individual independent COOs. The businesses have been divided under various heads such as national channels, regional channels, international operations and movie business.

In an internal statement to all the employs of Zee, Punit Goenka, CEO, ZEEL, said. "The media entertainment industry is going through a transition and the recent entry of new players has perpetuated the metamorphosis. It's time for us to take stock and get prepared to manage growth for future. This growth will not only be fueled by existing offerings but some new business opportunities will propel the growth engine to a large extent."

"These new business opportunities will not only help us expand our vistas but also extend our lateral business integration across the value chain. This new order of business reality will certainly demand significant changes in support systems, operational framework and the organisational architecture," wrote in an internal communication to the company's executives." Goenka says in his statement.

"The existing organisational architecture has successfully facilitated our functioning so far and we have seen the benefits. But the changed business scenario has triggered the need to have a re-look at the architecture. The integration of existing workflow with the new architecture is being developed. We will announce these changes as we realign the existing structure in its new shape in due course of time," Goenka continues.

Nitin Vaidya, director, regional channels, ZEEL, has been appointed to the newly created role of chief operating officer, national channels, ZEEL. Vaidya would be looking after the operations of Zee TV, Zee Cinema, Zee Cafe, Zee Trendz, Zee Next, Zee Smile, Zee Muzic and Zee Jagran.

Vaidya will also have the additional responsibility of handling regional channels in the Hindi speaking markets (HSM), which includes Zee Marathi, Zee Bangla, Zee Punjabi and Zee Gujarati. All channel business heads of ZEEL except that of southern channels will now report to him. The southern group of channels will continue to be managed by G Ramprasad, chief executive officer, ZEEL - South.

Joy Chakraborty has been designated as chief revenue officer, in charge of advertisement and subscription revenues for all the domestic channels in India.

Bharat Ranga has been promoted as chief operating officer, international operations, ZEEL. He will oversee sales and revenue for global markets and will be handling the task of customising the ZEEL offerings for the global audience.

Neil Chakraborty, business head, Zee Cafe, Zee Studio and Zee Trendz, has been designated head, strategy and business development.

Punit Goenka will be assisted by two executive assistants, namely Vijay Anand and Vikas Somani. The portfolio of corporate communications for the Essel Group will be headed by R Nand Kumar, president, corporate communications.

The movie business of the group will handle production, marketing, sales and distribution of movies in various languages. The group is yet to name the personnel responsible for spearheading its movie business.