Rusk Media appoints Amit Gokhale as national revenue head for mid-market business

MUMBAI: Sponsorship sales rarely make headlines, but when a company is trying to turn a portfolio of Gen Z-friendly content into a serious advertising business, who’s running the revenue desk matters rather a lot. Rusk Media has appointed Amit Gokhale as national revenue head for its mid-market business, handing him charge of sponsorship sales and business development across the company’s content slate.

Gokhale’s brief is a broad one. He will oversee monetisation across Rusk’s large-format originals, including Bharat Ke Super Founders, hosted by Suniel Shetty, and iPOPSTAR, alongside the company’s fast-growing micro-drama business, while also playing a central role in building Alright TV! into both a consumer brand and an OTT platform in its own right. That last part is arguably the more interesting mandate: turning a content property into a platform people actively choose to visit is a rather different challenge from simply selling ad slots around existing shows, and it will require Gokhale to work across both agency relationships and direct-brand channels to bring advertisers onto Rusk’s roster.

The appointment brings genuine pedigree to the role. Gokhale carries over two decades of experience in digital media and advertising, having built revenue engines and content-led businesses at some of the more recognisable names in Indian and global media, Tyroo, where he most recently led connected TV advertising, Channel Factory, CarDekho, Times Internet, Condé Nast’s GQ India, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Radio One and CNBC-TV18. Along the way, he has run P&L for multi-crore OEM and brand partnerships and scaled native and branded content businesses, the kind of track record that suggests a fairly reliable hand at converting audience attention into measurable revenue.

For Rusk Media, founded in 2019 as a full-stack digital entertainment company building mobile-first video IP for Gen Z and millennial audiences, the hire fits a clear pattern of ambition. The company already spans owned and partner platforms, from Amazon MX Player and JioHotstar to its own Alright! TV, backed by its advertising arm, Rusk Ads. Bringing in an executive with Gokhale’s connected TV and native advertising background suggests Rusk is serious about the harder second act every content company eventually faces: not just making shows people watch, but building a monetisation engine sturdy enough to support the ambition behind them.