Netflix India Brings Ex Jio Star's Exec Director, Marketing Head
Vamsi Murthy, who previously served as the Executive Director and Marketing Head for Jio Star, has now been named to the position of Senior Director and Marketing Lead at Netflix's Indian operations.
Murthy says, “Thrilled to join Netflix to lead the Marketing charter in India. Looking forward to partnering with some of the best creative minds as we shape what's next. Here's to stories that connect, entertain, and inspire — the Netflix way”.
Murthy initially started his professional journey at Radio Mirchi, subsequently transitioning to a managerial role in marketing communications at Reliance Communications.
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After that, he pursued opportunities at MakeMyTrip.com, and then advanced his career by joining Myntra Jabong as a Senior Brand Marketing Manager, ultimately progressing to the position of Director of Brand Marketing.
He has previously served in senior marketing leadership positions at ZEE5, where he was the Vice President of Marketing, and at BookMyShow, where he held the role of Head of Marketing.
While working at JioStar, Murthy was responsible for managing Hotstar's consumer marketing strategy, successfully developing brand recognition and value for both fictional and non-fictional programming.
He initiated a comprehensive transformation of entertainment marketing, creating end-to-end marketing approaches, crafting strategic guidelines for content marketing across different categories, and establishing sophisticated performance evaluation methods — which ultimately resulted in more cost-effective customer acquisition and enhanced return on investment.
JioHotstar, the digital streaming service owned by India's largest media corporation, has achieved the milestone of surpassing one billion downloads on the Google Play Store in India, putting it in the same league as global streaming leader Netflix.
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This achievement comes in the context of both platforms experiencing intense competition in subscriber numbers. JioHotstar, which was introduced in February as a merged platform combining JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar, has reportedly accumulated approximately 300 million subscribers to date, according to an insider source. In comparison, Netflix, which operates in roughly 190 countries, is estimated to have around 309.8 million subscribers as of September, based on Bloomberg Consensus data.
With more than 500 million active users each month, JioHotstar currently dominates the digital streaming market in India, as confirmed by the informed source. Following Netflix, Amazon MX Player, the free streaming platform associated with the e-commerce giant, is the only other service in India to have achieved over one billion downloads on Google Play. Amazon's Prime Video platform has also secured over 500 million downloads on the same digital marketplace.
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During the third quarter of the year (July-September), JioStar, supported by Reliance Industries, experienced a substantial 127.5 percent increase in its net profit, reaching 1,322 crore rupees compared to the previous quarter. In a recent earnings discussion, Kevin Vaz, the chief executive officer of entertainment at JioStar, emphasized the company's strategic focus on consistently attracting viewers to its digital platforms through engaging, long-form series. Furthermore, in the month of October, JioHotstar launched an innovative artificial intelligence-driven series called Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, developed in partnership with Collective Artists Network, which quickly became one of the platform's most-watched shows, generating an impressive 26.5 million video views.
Within the Indian streaming market, Netflix remains the sole major platform exclusively using a subscription-based video-on-demand approach, whereas JioHotstar and Amazon Prime Video have transitioned to incorporating advertisement-inclusive hybrid revenue models.