Inside Uday Shankar’s grand plan to kill TV
₹1,400 crore in size in 2007, to a Rs20,000 crore entertainment behemoth by 2020-21. In 2018, Walt Disney Company acquired Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc., making Star India a part of Walt Disney. Shankar quit as the India chairman and president of Asia Pacific for the Walt Disney Company in December 2020.
Thereafter, he started Bodhi Tree Ventures, a joint venture with James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems. In April 2022, Reliance announced that Bodhi Tree Systems will invest Rs13,500 crore in Viacom18, to jointly “pioneer the Indian media landscape’s transformation to a streaming-first approach". A year later, Reliance stated that Bodhi Tree has invested Rs4,306 crore as the first tranche of its overall commitment, mopping up a 13% stake in Viacom18.
And Shankar joined the board as a director. While Viacom18 continues to run the 46 television channels, JioCinema, an OTT streaming service, was folded into Viacom18 recently. Shankar has been plotting a disruption with this OTT service at the heart—well, if he has his way, he could hasten the demise of the good old television by making access to even premium content nearly free on the digital platform.
The executive sitting in that post-Diwali introductory meeting sensed “disruption with total dominance". But what was not apparent back then was how Shankar would go about his new innings. If you have followed Shankar’s career and moves at Star India, his playbook at Viacom18 starts to make sense.
One, he excels when given a free reign. Star India was the crown jewel of Rupert and James Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox. The Murdochs gave Shankar a free hand.
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