Bringing you quick updates on the tech space, policy making and digital rights from India and across the globe. What awaits Disney and Star India's new head After Uday Shankar's departure from Disney and Star, the company has chosen K Madhavan to succeed him. Madhavan is a Star veteran, and steadily oversaw a formidable broadcast presence for the media conglomerate in South India. Now, Madhavan's in charge of the House of Mouse and Star's entire India business, and is transitioning into a starkly different media environment from the one his predecessor oversaw. For one, ad-supported television has turned out to be a fair-weather business mode, as Shankar himself bitterly admitted during the initial months of the pandemic. So the largest challenge for Madhavan will be to entice customers to pay for a bigger slice of what they watch for, as opposed to merely subsidizing it. And that too in the middle of the worst economic situations India has found itself in in decades. And then there's streaming. Star and Disney are as well positioned as they can be to make Disney+ Hotstar a success story — they have huge reach (millions of people are livestreaming the Indian Premier League each day this season), enticing economics with cheap subscriptions and bundling, and an aggressive third party content strategy. The challenge now will be to turn an early strategic bet into a full-fledged profitable part of the business. Read: K Madhavan Named President Of Walt Disney And Star’s India Operations Uday Shankar:…
