Applause Entertainment, a privately held production company of Aditya Birla group’s chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, has appointed Deepak Segal as its Head of Content in its process of revamping the production arm, reports Television Post. Segal has previously worked on senior positions with media companies such as Fox Television Studio India Pvt. Ltd., Sahara Motion Pictures, Star India and Star Plus. He has studied Cinema and Film editing from Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). Bullish on streaming platforms Applause Entertainment was basically defunct for a long time and produced Amitabh Bachchan starrer movies such as Black (2005) and Dev (2004). Kumar Mangalam Birla had shut Applause Entertainment in 2009 after it struggled to turn a profit. In August this year then, Birla roped in the former group chief executive Sameer Nair of Balaji Telefilms to revamp the production house and make entertainment content for telecom operators and digital platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Hotstar. Birla will reportedly invest up to Rs 300 crore in his personal capacity in Applause Entertainment in the first year of its operations to make 15-20 shows across the drama, romance, crime and thriller genres, and it may occasionally produce movies. The content will be made in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu initially.
