Vipul Nagar Set To Lead the Gujarati Language Business in the New Joint Venture
Vipul Nagar has been appointed Vice President of Creative at JioStar, the new joint venture between Reliance, Viacom18 Media, and The Walt Disney Company. In this role, he will lead the Gujarati language business and report to Sumanta Bose, Head of Cluster, Entertainment (Star Plus and Bharat, Bengali, Marathi, and Gujarati).
Nagar has served in a variety of creative and programming roles for a diverse range of companies and has over 20 years of experience across the field and its different mediums. Previous stints for Nagar have been served at Mirchi Entertainment Network India Limited, where he spent nearly 15 years, as well as roles at independent agencies, and ‘as the CEO of his happiness. His latest posting was as Head of Content for Colors Rishtey, having been with Viacom 18 Media for a little over three years.
The merger, approved by the NCLT Mumbai, the Competition Commission of India, and other global regulatory authorities, unites Viacom18's and JioCinema's media assets with Star India, creating a media conglomerate valued at approximately Rs 70,352 crore (US$8.5 billion). RIL has further invested Rs 11,500 crore (US$1.4 billion) in the JV to bolster its growth.
RIL, with a 56% majority stake, leads the joint venture, while Disney holds 36.84% and Viacom18 contributes 46.82%. This strategic partnership consolidates some of India’s most popular entertainment brands Star, Colors, JioCinema, and Hotstar into a single entity. The newly formed media powerhouse will operate more than 100 TV channels, produce over 30,000 hours of content annually, and serve a combined digital subscriber base of over 50 million.