Brands
Pranav Kunkalienkar joins JioStar as associate director – corporate communications
Former Rajasthan Royals and Disney Star communications leader to steer JioStar’s brand narrative and media relations
MUMBAI: Pranav Kunkalienkar has been appointed as associate director – corporate communications at JioStar, strengthening the media company’s communications leadership as India’s entertainment and sports landscape continues to evolve.
In his new role, Kunkalienkar will lead corporate communications initiatives for JioStar, focusing on shaping the company’s brand narrative, managing media relations and driving strategic communications across its entertainment and sports ecosystem.
His appointment comes at a time when media companies are placing greater emphasis on strong storytelling and clear communication to engage audiences, partners and industry stakeholders in an increasingly competitive market.
Kunkalienkar joins JioStar after serving as manager – corporate communications and PR at Rajasthan Royals, where he led public relations and communication efforts for the IPL franchise.
Before that, he spent over three years at Disney Star as assistant manager – corporate communications for sports, supporting communications strategy around the broadcaster’s sports portfolio.
Earlier in his career, he worked at MSLGROUP as a senior account executive, handling communications mandates for multiple brands. He also held roles at Kooh Sports Private Limited as a marketing intern and at Rendezvous Sports World Pvt Ltd in marketing and business development.
Kunkalienkar began his professional journey as a business development consultant at Universal Hunt, where he worked on identifying and developing new business opportunities and partnerships.
With experience spanning sports, media and communications agencies, Kunkalienkar brings a well-rounded perspective to his new role as JioStar continues to strengthen its voice in India’s rapidly expanding entertainment and sports industry.
Brands
Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
