With the recent exit of Uday Sodhi as Business Head of SPNI’s Digital Business and OTT Platform SONY LIV, The network announced that Danish Khan would lead the digital business apart from his existing broadcast business role. A week ago his core team too, was announced.
Ashish Golwalkar who used to lead the content portfolio for SET has now been given additional responsibility of SonyLIV. Aman Srivastava, who has played an important role in the rebranding and positioning of SET moved to SonyLIV as Head – Marketing, Digital Business. Amogh Dusad as Head – Programming and New Initiatives, Digital Business will handle Strategic Planning, Operations, Viewership Management and Analytics for SonyLIV.
Six days into their new roles, Medianews4u caught up with the new digital team who has been the old broadcast hands at SPNI
Speaking about his journey at Sony Amogh Dusad said, “My journey at Sony has been fantastic. This is my 9th year at Sony. I have got great exposure across three different businesses of the network. Sony LIV is my third stint at the network. I was initially at the English cluster driving Sony PIX then moved onto SET. And then I moved on to digital products with Sony LIV and led the charge with product interactivity such as the KBC play along.”
Continuing Dusad said, “It’s been a fascinating journey and so much to learn. If you get the comfort of being in the same organization but get to go around and expose yourself to different areas of businesses the best of both worlds.”
Speaking about how SPNI’s culture is so different and encouraging, Ashish Golwalkar said, “Sony is the third broadcast network I’ve ever worked for. I started at Zee went to Star and came to Sony. I’ve been part of turnaround stories, but those turnarounds were like small U-turns. In Zee we were number three and then we went all the way to number one.At Star we were number three and went onto become leaders. But I have not been a part of any journey where we were number six and went onto become number one.”
Golwalkar further added, “I think NP Singh and everyone at SPNI are very supportive of all the things and they encourage entrepreneurial behaviour. I think they always encourage internal talent who can chart a growth path for themselves and the business. I think that way it’s a multinational, as an organization, but at the heart, it’s that Indian entrepreneurial behaviour that is encouraged.”
Talking straight about the business and charting the growth opportunities Aman Srivastava said, “Growth opportunitiesare not from an awareness perspective, but from a user perspective.If somebody has come onto SONY LIV I need to ensure that the person doesn’t go away. For me that’s the KPI which I will be running for. My KPI would be to bring in the new viewer as well. But how can I extend that experience outside with Sony Liv. I think that’s going to be first because none of the OTT platforms look at anything outside the product. I think from a subscriber to a fan, if I can create that, I think they’re all lovely.”
From the platform perspective Dusad said, “I think a good part about being in the digital business, is that everybody and everything seems to be growing at 35% to 40% CAGR. So there’s growth everywhere. I think it’s more important to align a business strategy, to that growth. I think that’s what we are all as a team trying to put together. But one clear focus is to on the subscription play, and get a lot of growth and traction and engagement and loyalty
from the users in that. If you’re putting together a strong, smart play, the idea is to get them engaged, engage consumers, engage consumers have a great experience and great content.
On the key focus areas, Dusad said, “Our focus would be hugely the original content line-upwhich is going to play a big role. We look at our consumer experience on the app, the interaction and the overall experience on every aspect of the app.From content discovery to recommendations. Whether it’s time of usage, whether it’s number of users, whether it’s time spent on we have multiple sessions on it. I think that would be the focus area for us.”
