Mumbai: Arnab Goswami, President-News & Editor-in-Chief, Times Now and ET Now, has won the IMPACT Person of the Year, 2015 Award, instituted by the exchange4media Group to recognize excellence in the Advertising, Media and Marketing domain. Goswami was given the award for revolutionizing news presentation and production on television, driving it to altogether new heights with his single-minded passion and taking Brand Times Now to consistent leadership position.
Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, was the Chief Guest at the glittering award ceremony, and presented the trophy to Goswami. “Arnab Goswami has become an icon for the country,” he said. Raj Nayak, CEO of Colors, handed over the citation for the award.
On winning the IPOY Award, Goswami said, “I am absolutely delighted. It is a very big honour to receive this award. This media industry has given me so much recognition, love and affection over the last 19 years that I have been in the industry. I’d like to accept this award on behalf of the very hardworking, passionate journalists, producers and content creators who have worked with me to make Times Now India’s No.1 channel of choice for the last 10 years. It’s been an amazing journey with ups and downs and I want to thank each one of you for your patience with me. I want to thank all of you from the media industry and my friends in the industry for standing by me over the last eight to 10 years that we built this brand because without your support, whatever we have achieved would not be possible and without your support, whatever I seek to do in the world of television and digital news media in the future would not be possible. Thank you very much for this.”
The other nominees for the award this year were Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Industrial Policy and Promotion, Govt. of India, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO South Asia of Dentsu Aegis Network, CVL Srinivas, CEO of GroupM South Asia, Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO of Snapdeal, Nikesh Arora, President & CEO of SoftBank Corp, Rana Kapoor, co-founder, MD & CEO of Yes Bank and Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder & CEO of Paytm.
The selection process for IPOY 2015 was handled by IMRB International, on the basis of industry-wide polls.
Past winners of the IPOY award include Punit Goenka, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (2014), Vineet Jain, Managing Director of Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (2013), Ambika Soni, former Minister for Information & Broadcasting (2012), Agnello Dias, Founder, Taproot India and Haresh Chawla, then Group CEO, Network18 and Viacom18 (2011); Uday Shankar, CEO, Star India (2010); Rajesh Kamat, then CEO of Colors (2009); Raghav Bahl, Founder, Network18 and Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-in-Chief, CNN-IBN (2006).
