GECs
Hathway promotes Milind Karnik
MUMBAI: For long, Hathway Cable & Datacom old-timer Milind Karnik has been mandated with running the cable TV MSO’s secretarial operations as company secretary. Now he has been given a new role: as the head of commercial – all India and also the western India head. Karnik has been with Hathway since 1998 and he has resigned from his earlier position to take up the post, Hathway informed the BSE on 6 December. Replacing him is Ajay Singh, who has been appointed as company secretary and compliance officer.
Singh has an experience of 17 years. He has moved to Hathway from Real Networks India. Prior to this, Singh has worked with Drishtee Dot Com, Rangs Technologies and PACL India.
While Karnik was already handling the commercial business in the western region, in his new role, he will be handling the all India commercial business for Hathway.
“With digitisation, one needs to get the consumer billing and consumer application form in place for phase I and II respectively. This is a huge task. Also, in my new role, I will be working towards successfully completing phase III and phase IV of digitisation in western India,” informs Karnik, who plans to focus more on DAS phase III and IV now.
Karnik will work with Hathway subsidiaries including Hathway Bhawani and Hathway Rajesh as well. He will serve on the GTPL Hathway board.
Karnik will also handle commercial business in hotels which has a different tariff structure. “Hotels are still not digitised and so I will be concentrating on that as well. We need to explain to the 3-Star and 5-Star properties where room base is 50 and above that digital feed is better than analogue,” he says.
“In the case of hotels, we also aim to focus on pay per view, which is a niche segment. That apart, I will be dealing with internet bandwidth in the commercial segment,” he concludes.
GECs
Zee scales syndication with global tie-ups, 350 plus channel MCN
Vertical, dubbed and audio formats boost digital reach
MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. is giving its content library a fresh passport. The company has stepped up its syndication push, signing global partnerships, experimenting with new-age formats and building a multi-channel network that now spans more than 350 channels.
With the newly secured MCN licence, Zee can manage, distribute and monetise content across leading digital platforms at scale, strengthening its presence in the fast-growing creator and short-form ecosystem.
To keep pace with changing viewing habits, the company is also reshaping its content into formats built for the small screen in your hand. In a tie-up with micro-drama platform Story TV, select titles are being reworked into vertical, short-duration episodes tailored for mobile-first audiences.
Beyond India, the syndication team is widening its global footprint with foreign-language dubbing and regional partnerships across Europe, Africa and Latin America, opening up fresh markets for Indian stories.
Zee is also tapping into the audio boom. It has begun licensing audio remake rights for legacy properties such as Zee Horror Show, with several more titles lined up for audio-first adaptations.
On the digital front, the company has made progress in monetising non-exclusive rights for library films, while converting select shows and movies from horizontal to vertical formats to improve discoverability on short-form platforms.
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. business head syndication Vinod Johri, said syndication has emerged as a strong growth lever for the company. He noted that the combination of a large MCN network, global partnerships and new formats such as vertical video and audio is helping build a future-ready engine that extracts more value from the content library.
Together, these moves signal a platform-agnostic approach to storytelling, as Zee repackages, localises and redistributes its IP across geographies, formats and screens, ensuring its catalogue keeps working long after the first broadcast.
