Amit Mehta joins Sony’s Indian arm as HR chief

Media conglomerates rarely make waves with a human resources appointment, but this one is worth a second look. Sony Pictures Networks India has named Amit Mehta as chief human resources officer, effective 1st October, taking over from Manu Wadhwa, who steps into a strategy advisor role rather than exiting the building entirely, a graceful handover that suggests continuity matters as much as change here.

Mehta’s résumé reads like a masterclass in scale versus speed. He spent more than 14 years at Hindustan Unilever, most recently as HR head for home care and leadership development across South Asia, cutting his teeth on talent development, employer brand and organisation design inside one of India’s most disciplined corporate machines. He then swapped that stability for upGrad, a founder-led, high-growth edtech outfit, where he ran the people agenda as CHRO and focused on leadership effectiveness and organisational capability. That range, blue-chip rigour paired with startup pace, is precisely the mix gaurav banerjee, SPNI’s managing director and chief executive, flagged as valuable for a company now entering its next chapter.

At SPNI, Mehta inherits the people and organisation function alongside administration and facilities, reporting directly into the leadership team on succession planning, culture and employee experience. It is not a glamorous brief on paper, but for a broadcaster with 29 channels, a streaming platform in Sony LIV and a reach of over 700 million viewers across more than 150 countries, keeping talent aligned through digital transformation is about as consequential as any content decision.

The appointment also lands at an interesting moment for SPNI, now in its 31st year of Indian operations and still carrying the institutional memory of its rebrand from Culver Max Entertainment. The company has built a reputation as an employer of choice, picking up recognition from the Great Place to Work Institute and AVTAR & Seramount’s inclusion indices in recent years. Bringing in a CHRO with founder-led company experience hints at an appetite to move faster on culture and capability building, without losing the polish that comes with decades of legacy broadcasting DNA.

Wadhwa’s shift to strategy advisor, rather than a clean exit, is a smart signal too. Institutional knowledge rarely walks out the door gracefully in Indian media, and keeping her voice in the room while Mehta settles in should smooth what is otherwise a high-stakes handover inside a company betting heavily on its next growth phase.