Mahesh Sawlani named CRO of OneDigital Entertainment

MUMBAI: NewMedia Holding has gone shopping in the influencer economy’s talent pool, hiring Mahesh Sawlani for a dual mandate: senior vice president of the Group and chief revenue officer of OneDigital Entertainment. The appointment marks the moment NMH shifts gears, from seventeen years of quiet foundation-building to what it calls its next phase of hyper-scaling and commercialisation.

Sawlani steps into a brief that spans NMH’s entire commercial engine, strategy, partnerships, revenue growth and business expansion across a portfolio running to more than 35 brands. His mission, in the Group’s own framing, is to accelerate commercialisation of an ecosystem the company insists has no real precedent, one built patiently rather than pursued for quick wins.

That patience is the crux of NMH’s pitch. Rather than commercialising early and building capabilities later, the Group spent its first seventeen years architecting infrastructure, an approach it credits for producing what it calls the world’s first, and currently only, truly integrated full-lifecycle digital ecosystem. The claim rests on stitching together media, entertainment, the creator economy, the fan economy, artificial intelligence, blockchain, technology, commerce, communities and consumer businesses into a single connected operating model, all run on proprietary technology and shared digital infrastructure. Notably, the Group has built this entirely organically, bootstrapped and profitable, without a rupee of external institutional investment, growing instead through disciplined execution, partnerships and selective acquisitions.

Each business is designed to stand on its own, but NMH’s real pitch to clients is the ecosystem effect: technology, audiences, intellectual property and capabilities working in concert to produce stronger commercial outcomes, whether a client wants one service or the full stack. That stack spans six distinct ecosystems: talent, covering creators, influencers, celebrities, sports stars and artists; content and entertainment, covering film, web series, music, podcasts and live experiences; commerce, covering merchandising, fashion, pharmacy, fuel delivery and social commerce; community, covering everything from education and gaming to Web3 and space; technology and AI, covering proprietary AI, automation and enterprise software; and blockchain and Web3, anchored by what NMH claims is the only gasless Layer 1 blockchain infrastructure in its space, alongside loyalty platforms, tokenisation and digital banking.

Sawlani arrives with his own credentials intact. He most recently headed Big Bang Social, the influencer marketing and creator-focused arm of Collective Artists Network, where he scaled revenue, developed new business lines, integrated commercial and delivery functions and ran overall P&L performance. Across a career spanning more than seventeen years, he has built experience across media, digital, telecom, the creator economy, intellectual property and technology-led commercial growth, a résumé NMH clearly views as tailor-made for the job at hand.

Shabir Momin, founder, managing director and chief technology officer of NewMedia Holding, called the appointment an important moment in the Group’s journey, saying the objective was never to build isolated businesses but a full-lifecycle ecosystem where every part strengthens the other. He added that Sawlani understood both the complexity and the opportunity of what had been built, bringing commercial depth and operational excellence to the leadership team.

Abhishek Joshi, group chief executive of NMH, struck a similar note, saying the Group had built an extraordinary foundation across industries, technologies and markets, and that the task now was to unlock its full commercial potential. He said Sawlani’s experience scaling businesses and leading high-performance teams made him a significant addition as the Group accelerates into its next phase.

For his part, Sawlani said understanding Momin’s long-term vision and Joshi’s strategy made clear that NMH was building something unlike anything else in the industry, a deeply integrated ecosystem connecting creators, communities, technology, commerce and intellectual property. He said sustainable growth in the creator and fan economy would increasingly come from exactly that kind of connection, and that he was looking forward to driving revenue growth, building partnerships and unlocking new monetisation opportunities across the ecosystem.

NewMedia Holding operates more than 35 brands across over 10 locations, spanning names including OneDigital Entertainment, ODE MENA, OneAxcess, MerchGarage, SpaceVrse, ZengaTV, Social Nation, Digital2Sports and TorusChain, among others, all run under an operating philosophy the Group summarises in four words: create, propagate, monetise, scale. With Sawlani now in the building, the question shifts from what NMH has built to how fast it can now sell it.