Bangalore : Star India’s Kannada Entertainment Channel has found a new Business Head in Ashok Namboodiri. He will be taking charge of the Business affairs of Suvarna from next week and currently the induction process in taking place, according to the sources from the market.
Ashok Namboodiri is replacing Anup Chandrasekar, who was in the helm of affairs of Suvarna since 2008. It seems Anup Chandrasekar will be assuming larger responsibilities in the areas of content integration in South, as per the newly incorporated internal restructuring in Star India.
Ashok comes from a strong FMCG background with more than 20 years of experience through his association with various MNCs like HUL, Coca Cola, Schwarzkopf, Tata Tea, NourishCo Beverages (a Tata PepsiCo JV), Britannia etc.. .
Prior to this he was the Business Director of J.K. Helen Curtis Ltd. where he was responsible for building the FMCG portfolio of brands like Park Avenue and Raymond.
Ashok is considered as a ‘Wavemaker’, due to his quick action formula and related changes that he brought in to the businesses of whichever organisations he had stepped in the past.
He also played a three years stint with Britannia as Business Head of Dairy division, with topline and botttomline delivery responsibilities. He formulated a comprehensive dairy strategy for the group.
Ashok Namboodiri is a B.Tech graduate from College of Engineering – Trivandrum. He also completed his MBA from Delhi University.
Ashok steps in to Suvarna with the task of lifting the channel from No. 4 in Kannada GEC market. During 2012 Suvarna was No. 1 channel in weekdays prime time. However, Colors Kannada managed to overpower it with in short span of revamp, after it was acquired by Viacom18. In recent times Zee Kannada also managed to scale-up ahead of Suvarna.
The old warhorse Udaya TV is also holding its breath to pull up its ranking. Kannada GEC market has become very highly competitive with limitations on ROI due to its smaller market size.
