(28 January 2008 11:25 am)

MUMBAI: Set Discovery head Gurjeev Singh Kapoor has quit to join the recently formed distribution joint venture between Star India and Digital Entertainment Network (Den) as chief executive.

Kapoor will be joining Den-Star on 1 February, industry sources close to the developments have told Indiantelevision.com.

It was just last August that Kapoor was elevated from SVP, sales & marketing at Set-Discovery, to overall head. This followed the departure of Set-Discovery president Anuj Gandhi to Den as chief executive.

An industry veteran with 13+ years in the trade, Kapoor has earlier worked with ESPN and Zee International before joining Discovery Communications. He moved to Set Discovery in April 2002, when the joint venture between Sony Entertainment Television and Discovery Communications was formed.

Star India and Den have recently formed a JV to create a platform for distributing television channels in India via all fixed networks including cable, DTH, IPTV, HITS and MMDS. The 50:50 joint venture will be headquartered in Mumbai.

Under the agreement, the joint venture will be an exclusive distributor for Star India for all channels distributed domestically by Star India. It will also seek to expand its bouquet offerings by including other third party channels for distribution.

Den is a cable network set up by Global Broadcast News joint MD Sameer Manchanda as lead promoter and TV18 MD Raghav Bahl as founding partner.