Discovery Communications has appointed Winradit Kasidit Kolasastraseni to the new position of Senior Vice President, Innovation – Asia Pacific, and named Karan Paul as Vice President, Strategy – Asia Pacific, taking over the portfolio of Helen Whittle who has relocated to New Zealand.
Both Kolasastraseni and Paul will be based in Singapore and report to Arthur Bastings, President and Managing Director of Discovery Networks Asia Pacific. Whittle continues as Vice President, Strategy, with a focus on Discovery’s Pacific businesses and Special Projects, reporting to Bastings.
Commenting on the appointments, Bastings said, “As we evolve our business from a traditional linear pay-tv to a true convergent media and entertainment business, adding diversity to our leadership and enhancing our skillset is critical. Winradit and Karan bring with them strong non-linear and ICT experience, and I am very excited to have them on board as we continue to evolve our product and business portfolio.”
Kolasastraseni will focus on the evolution of Discovery to a progressive digitally native product and services company. Key initiatives will include the incubation of new digital businesses; extensions of existing brands into online communities; and a strong push into big data and analytics. Kolasastraseni is no stranger to the industry, having founded Thailand’s premium OTT service PrimeTime Entertainment. During his stewardship as CEO, PrimeTime amassed over 2 million registered users within a year of its launch. Kolasastraseni was also the CEO and founder of technology and media companies Ploenjit Media and Fly Digital Media in Thailand. Prior to this, he was with Microsoft Thailand, SAS Software, Total Access Communication, Huasheng Industry, Cisco Systems, Samart Internet, and Point Asia Dot Com. Kolasastraseni holds a BS in Information Technology from Assumption University, Bangkok.
On the other hand, Karan Paul will partner with Bastings and the General Managers of Discovery’s five newly-formed APAC market clusters on all strategy matters as the company seeks to adopt a unique and differentiated approach for each of its businesses.
Paul comes to Discovery from Singtel, where he was Director, Group Projects & Consulting. He led the group’s in-house consulting team and advised senior management and the various business units on areas including partnership models and content bundling. He was previously with Value Partners Management Consulting in Singapore, PwC in India, and Absolutdata Analytics in India and San Francisco. Paul holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
