MAM
From Netflix to Next-Gen AI, Akash Iyer joins OpenAI India as social lead
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… AI-ction! After nearly seven years scripting cultural moments at Netflix, Akash Iyer is stepping into a whole new frame as the social lead for OpenAI in India. Iyer, who announced his move on LinkedIn with a mix of excitement and humility, joins at a pivotal moment. India is ChatGPT’s second-largest market after the US, and OpenAI is doubling down on its local presence with its first India office slated to open in Delhi later this year and a new India-only ChatGPT plan priced at Rs 399 per month.
With over a decade in media and marketing, Iyer has a résumé as eclectic as it is impactful. At Netflix, he masterminded over 100 campaigns, from The Archies to the flagship Playback, scaled Youtube from zero to 20 million subscribers, and grew Instagram from 1 million to 8 million followers. Before that, he sharpened his storytelling craft at Buzzfeed, Sportskeeda, and The Glitch, dabbling in everything from viral video formats to sports explainers.
His move signals OpenAI’s serious intent to court India’s fast-growing user base especially students, who, according to the company, use ChatGPT more here than anywhere else in the world. OpenAI comms head for Asia Pacific Jake Wilczynski summed it up: “India is not just a big market, it’s a critical one.”
For Iyer, the leap is more than a career pivot. “It’s an incredible opportunity, but also a deep responsibility to contribute to building AGI for the benefit of humanity,” he wrote. With his cultural instincts and digital flair, OpenAI’s India story may just get the blockbuster treatment it needs.
Brands
YES Bank appoints S Anantharaman as chief risk officer
Former Jio Financial Services group chief risk officer takes charge of enterprise-wide risk at the embattled private lender
MUMBAI: YES Bank is not taking chances with risk anymore. The private lender has appointed S Anantharaman as its chief risk officer, a hire that signals the bank’s continued effort to rebuild credibility and tighten the controls that once famously slipped.
Anantharaman arrives from Jio Financial Services, where he served as group chief risk officer and built a risk management architecture spanning lending, payments, insurance broking and asset management from the ground up. Before that, he held the chief risk officer role at Bank of Baroda and senior leadership positions at HDFC Bank and L&T Finance Holdings. Three decades in banking and financial services, in other words, with scars and qualifications to match. He is a chartered accountant and a CFA charterholder.
At YES Bank, his brief is considerable. Anantharaman will oversee the bank’s entire enterprise-wide risk framework, covering credit policy, market risk, operational risk, information security, data governance, analytics, model governance and data privacy. It is, in short, every lever that matters when a bank is trying to prove it has grown up.
YES Bank’s turbulent past needs little rehearsing. What it needs now is exactly what Anantharaman has spent thirty years building: the kind of risk culture that stops problems before they become headlines. The appointment suggests the bank knows it.
