Durga Raghunath has joined the The Indian Express Group as CEO of Indian Express Digital Media Services, starting tomorrow. She will be responsible for managing the business and editorial operations of all digital brands of the Express Group, effectively taking on the role that Sandeep Amar had left; he resigned in July. Raghunath will have to figure out what to do with a lot of the brands that Amar launched during his tenure, including language verticals in Malayalam, and Tamil; a youth vertical called inuth.com, a health vertical Lifealth.com, ExpressFoodie as a website. The Indian Express also plans to launch paid ad-free plans for readers, although access to content will not be restricted behind a paywall. Other Indian Express portals include their flagship IndianExpress.com, Loksatta.com and Expressdrives.com. Raghunath is the co-founder of Juggernaut Books, along with Chiki Sarkar, and left that company as CEO when she resigned earlier this year. Prior to that, she had a brief stint - around six months - at Zomato, as SVP of Growth. Prior to that she had been CEO of Network18 Digital, and had been instrumental in setting up FirstPost. She's also a Facebook #SheLeadsTech mentor. At Indian Express, Raghunath will report to George Varghese, CEO, The Indian Express Group.
