MUMBAI: The board of directors of Essel Propack Ltd has appointed ex-Viacom18 boss Sudhanshu Vats as chief executive officer & managing director of the company. He has also been appointed as additional director of the company effective from 16 April 2020.
Vats is also designated as key managerial personnel pursuant to The Companies Act 2013.The company has updated the development in a stock exchange filing. On Tuesday, Viacom18 announced that Vats decided to move on after eight years at the helm.
Vats has more than 28 years of industry experience across the FMCG and media sectors. During his tenure at Viacom18, he scaled the business from a mere six to over 54 television channels across more than 80 countries, added three more lines of business and grew revenue by over 4x.
By building a strong portfolio of direct to consumer digital offerings under the VOOT brand and strengthening data science and analytics capability, he has future-proofed the media company that has been admired for its culture, quality of talent and progressive people policies. Under his leadership, Viacom18 emerged as the fastest growing full-play media organisation in India.
Prior to joining Viacom18, Vats spent more than 20 years at Unilever in various sales and marketing and general management roles. He left Unilever as the head of Unilever’s laundry business in South Asia and head of the Radiant brand globally. He made Radiant the fastest growing laundry brand in the world with over Euro 500 million turnover. During his long tenure at Unilever, he shaped many popular household brands, most notably Lipton, Vim, Wheel, Surf, Rin, Lifebuoy and Lux.
Vats is also the chairman of the National Media and Entertainment Committee of CII (Confederation of Indian Industry), vice president of IBF (Indian Broadcasting Foundation) and Director at BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council). He is also on the advisory board of a number of NGOs. He holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. He received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra.
