Subhash Chandra's younger son Amit Goenka is the new CEO of ZEEL's intl division

Indian media baron, Dr. Subhash Chandra, chairman of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd seems to be inspired by his former partner Rupert Murdoch, as he pulled his younger son, Amit Goenka as CEO of Zeel's international broadcasting business. His elder son, Puneet Goenka has already been successfully managing business since last 10 years, pulling Amit into the company will only take Zeel to new heights.

Amit who has more than 10 years experience and is the CEO of Pan India has been involved with the non-media businesses of the group. Some of the other projects where he is involved are ITZ Cash, animation division, wireless mobility, 7575 short code business, Digital Media Convergence Limited, Mumbai Football Club, All Sports Bar and All Sports Magazine amongst others. Amit was also involved with Zee Telefilms where he was closely associated with the group's investment and restructuring of the ICO project, a global mobile telephony project during his early days.

The international business showed the topline number (revenue) of Rs 202.2 crore for second quarter of the fiscal ended 30 September 2015. Out of this, international advertising revenue stood at Rs 73.5 crore, subscription revenue was at Rs 103.9 crore and revenue from other sales and services stood at Rs 24.8 crore. In the international markets, ZEEL has 36 dedicated channels serving rich Indian content across 169 countries.

The strategy ahead:

Zeel is reorganizing its overseas broadcasting operations of all international channels, excluding sports, English channels and uplinking activities. Currently, the international channels are under overseas subsidiaries Asia Today Ltd, Mauritius, which is being renamed ATL Media Ltd and Zee Multimedia Worldwide (Mauritius) Ltd, or their respective subsidiaries.

With an aim to provide clear focus on international broadcasting operations, the company has also got board approval to transfer all the international channels housed under different subsidiaries to a wholly owned subsidiary of Asia Today Ltd. The restructuring should not have major impact on financial statements of the company.

Additionally, Zeel has also got board approval to write-off of an investment of GBP 3.25 million (equivalent to Rs. 33.06 crore) made by Asia Today Ltd, in 2013 for acquiring a minority stake in MirriAD Ltd, which was a a UK-based digital brand integration agency. This write-off was on account of continuing losses and consequent capital reduction and restructuring in the latter.