Disney+ Hotstar has appointed Sunil Rayan as president and head. Rayan will report to The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific president and Star and Disney India chairman Uday Shankar. Rayan comes from Google where he was managing director for Google Cloud for Games.
At Google he helped oversee product, engineering and business development strategies. Before that, he was managing director for the mobile app advertising business, associate principal at American management consulting firm McKinsey & Co with expertise in sales force productivity, sales growth and technology-enabled selling topics and software engineer at IT service management company iGate Mastech.
The Disney+ Hotstar streaming service offers access to anime titles including kids favourite Shin-chan and Doraemon. It also brings original shows, documentary series and mockumentaries amongst other categories. Commenting on the development Shankar said, “Sunil is an exciting talent with global accomplishments and I am very excited to have him lead the talented Disney+ Hotstar team.
21st Century Fox launched the Hotstar streaming service in February 2015. Disney India combined the service with its Disney+ streaming service in February 2020. It is estimated to acquire a potential 25 per cent of the total online video revenue pie by 2025, second only to Google’s YouTube.
Since former Hotstar CEO Ajit Mohan left the company in 2018 to head Facebook’s India operations, the company had primarily been managed by Shankar. Former Star and Disney India managing director Sanjay Gupta had joined Google as country manager and vice-president of sales and operations for India last November.