Star CEO named media industry’s Person of the Decade

Mumbai, Dec 7:

The CEO of Star India, Uday Shankar, has been named the media industry’s Person of the Decade.

Shankar received the award Friday from Maharashtra Governor C. Vidyasagar Rao at an event attended by top media, marketing and advertising professionals.

Rao described Shankar’s journey from being a print journalist to heading a large media organization as “spectacular”, adding the Star CEO’s “agenda of driving social change through programmes like Satyamev Jayate has had a huge impact”.

“In a country where cricket is a religion, he has brought to the fore games like hockey and kabaddi and demonstrated how these games could also be popularised in a changing world,” Rao added.

The Impact Person of the Year award is promoted by exchange4media and IMPACT magazine, and the Person of the Decade award is a special one to mark the 10th anniversary of the annual award.

The award recognises the one individual who has made maximum and far-reaching impact on the media, marketing and advertising industry.

Accepting the award, Shankar said: “There is nothing more special than peer recognition. I consider myself a creation of this industry, and for this industry to recognise that I might have made some impact on the last decade fills me with a sense of both pride and gratitude.”

Shankar credited his and Star’s success story primarily to what he called “collaboration”.

“This (collaboration) is one thing that I seem to have done better and better in the last 10 years. When I was first handed the reins, I did not know my way around outside the newsroom.

“In retrospect I think I learnt how to be an effective CEO and turn around an organisation by not just working with all my colleagues, both young and old, but by letting them lead me in areas which were not my core expertise,” he said.

Shankar, who has been active on industry issues, noted that while “the whole world insisted that only the government could govern us, we have proved that self-governance is a viable option”.

He added that the spirit of collaboration had now extended beyond broadcasters to even agencies and advertisers.

(IANS)