K. Anand Raman joins JioStar as vice president

DELHI: K. Anand Raman has traded one Star for another. After nearly 18 years at Disney Star, the media executive has joined JioStar as vice president, marking one of the more notable defections in India’s rapidly consolidating entertainment industry.

Raman’s career reads like a roadmap of Indian broadcasting’s evolution. He joined Star India in 2008 as a senior executive, back when the network was still finding its feet in regional markets. Over nearly two decades, he climbed the ranks, eventually becoming director in 2021 while simultaneously holding the title of assistant vice president since 2017, a dual role that saw him oversee operations across multiple channels.

His most recent stint involved running the Maa Network, a Telugu-language cluster acquired by Star in late 2015. Raman’s job was to stitch the acquisition into Star’s broader regional strategy, a task that involved integrating teams, maximising revenue and building what corporate types call “synergies”. Before that, he led sales for Star’s English infotainment and lifestyle portfolio, including National Geographic and Fox Life, and managed advertising for Star Movies.

The move to JioStar, which began in November 2025, places Raman in Hyderabad at a moment when India’s media giants are locked in a brutal battle for eyeballs and advertising rupees. JioStar, the result of a mega-merger between Reliance’s Viacom18 and Disney Star, represents one of the largest entertainment consolidations in Indian history. For Raman, it is both a homecoming of sorts, given his Star pedigree, and a bet on the next phase of India’s streaming and broadcast wars.

Before his long Star tenure, Raman cut his teeth at Radio City, India’s first private FM station, where he handled key accounts from 2006 to 2008. Earlier still, he worked at Chitralekha Group, managing advertising for a leading Gujarati magazine, and did a brief stint at Bennett Coleman’s Times Syndication Service during the launch of Times Books.

Twenty-two years in media, multiple channel launches, regional integrations and now a vice president’s chair at a freshly minted entertainment behemoth. Whether JioStar proves to be Raman’s biggest stage yet or just another chapter in India’s endless media melodrama remains to be seen. Either way, he knows the script by heart.