MAM
Cleartrip makes slew of executive appointments amid 2022 growth plans
Mumbai: Online travel company Cleartrip on Monday announced a series of senior appointments to spearhead the company’s aggressive growth plans and focus on the execution of strategic priorities for 2022. The appointments include the heads of strategy, hotels & accommodation, flights, corporate communications, and B2B.
The hiring encompasses redefining the organisational culture and strengthening values in line with the growth plans, the travel company said in a statement. “With these appointments, the company is gearing us for its next phase of growth across its business verticals and further plans to ramp up its employee strength by 60 per cent by the end of the year,” it added.
Gaurav Patwari has been named VP – air category. He will use his 16 years of rich experience in the travel and aviation industry to help further build Cleartrip’s air travel vertical. He will be responsible for meeting the air business’s P&L targets while also developing a multi-year strategy for the company’s evolution and expansion. Patwari was most recently associated with GoFirst.
Karthick Prabhu D, the newly appointed Cleartrip head of strategy, has been a part of the travel tech industry for over 17 years with various travel brands such as Treebo hotels, Sabre, IDS Next, to name a few. As a product management leader, he has helped launch products that solve customer pain points, boost revenue, introduced an industry-first product as a tablet-based property management system, and got one of the apps featured in the ‘Best In India’ category in the Apple Appstore and Google Play Store.
Flipkart veteran Manu Sasidharan who has taken over as senior director – hotels and accommodation was the business head of Myntra’s men’s fashion segment prior to joining Cleartrip. He has worked with companies such as General Motors India and Bajaj Auto. He intends to use his diverse expertise to structurally rebuild and relaunch the hotels and accommodation category, with a strong emphasis on greater customer experience.
Divya Kumar has been appointed as director of public relations. In her new role, she will focus on building and spearheading the development, advancement and execution of the company’s corporate communications strategy. She was previously leading the public relations and sustainability mandate at AirAsia India. Before joining the field of corporate communications, Kumar started her career at NDTV Hindu, in the news & events department. Throughout her career spanning over 11 years, she has worked closely with the senior leadership team as a strategic advisor providing in-depth expertise in change management, crisis response, maneuvering corporate and consumer crises.
A Cleartrip veteran with over 21 years of experience, Sukesh Shetty has been roped in to head the B2B and API business, with a focus to bring automation and growth in the online B2B travel experiences. In his previous stint, Shetty was the co-founder of Tripsforbusiness, a B2B focused travel tech platform involved in building a content-rich, metasearch and book travel product for B2B customers. His journey resumes with the purpose of contributing to the success of the B2B business at Cleartrip.
“Cleartrip is at a pivotal point in its growth trajectory, and we seek to excel in every area we operate in,” commented Cleartrip CEO Ayyappan Rajagopal. “Building the right leadership team across verticals is crucial as senior leaders serve as catalysts in exponentially accelerating our overall growth. The new leadership team and I have a clear vision to take the Cleartrip brand forward.”
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
