MUMBAI: Moving to fill the vacancies made by some recent exits, Ronnie Screwvala's UTV has appointed Venugopal Chandrashekar as director channel management, Tina Kapoor (ex-Hungama) as creative director and Pervez Quadir as creative consultant.
Chandrashekar, who joins UTV on 16 August; has a job role that includes servicing channels, ideating closely with the creative team and strategizing on retaining eyeballs on programming content. He will primarily be looking after a top line general entertainment channel as well as south based channels. The details of the channels have not been divulged.
Chandrashekar had his last day yesterday at Contract Advertising where he was account direct. Calling himself a Contract veteran, Chandrashekar has had extensive experience in servicing in the last 12 years. In Contract, Chandrashekar worked on international and national accounts like Asian paints, Baja Auto, Philips lighting, Heinz, Shoppers stop, ICICI BANK, BPCL and Allianze Bajaj, to name a few.
Queried by indiantelevision.com as to what value addition he is going to bring UTV, Chandrashekar states, "In the advertising arena, one has a very structured and insightful methodology that one works by. Production houses, still are not so researched and scientific in their approach, hence this will be primarily where I will be contributing and adding value to UTV."
Why UTV? Chadrashekar elucidates, "The television industry is exploding and I have always been very passionate about entertainment, movies and music. Secondly, UTV have their plans in place and are also a very ambitious production house, and nothing like being with a company that you can connect to in terms of the same goals."
Interestingly, Tina Kapoor who was with Hungama for the last five months as creative director and who incidentally put in her papers a few weeks ago, is now joining UTV as creative director starting 26 July. Kapoor will primarily be managing new shows. Kapoor will have four shows under her charge to begin with --- two fiction shows for Star India's soon to be launched "upend" channel Star One, a lifestyle show for Times Television and a fiction show for Sony Entertainment.
Talking about her entry into UTV, Kapoor voices, "It's going to be a lot of fun considering the big plans UTV has in the offing. I have always worked with a channel before (earlier stints with B4U and MTV) and this is my first time with a production house. I see a very bright future here."
Another development is the appointment of Pervez Quadir as creative consultant. Quadir, who has made a name for himself in Indipop and is well known in the entertainment industry, has already begun work as a creative distrupter (one who analyses paradigm shifts as well as spots emerging trends in television).
