MUMBAI: MTV India has finally found someone to head sales in the country following the elevation of Sanjay Puthli to man the Viacom affiliate's operations in the Asian region.
MTV India MD Alex Kuruvilla confirmed to indiantelevision.com today that Abraham Thomas, Sony Entertainment Television India's senior vice president sales, would be taking charge by mid-April as V-P ad sales.
Kuruvilla said that Thomas was joining during a challenging time for the network as a whole new series of initiatives were in the pipeline for MTV as well as the struggling kids channel Nickelodeon. Kuruvilla said some major announcements in this regard would be made soon. Thomas would also have a role to play as far as strategic inputs towards development of the two channels in the region were concerned, he added.
With the addition of Thomas to the team, it would appear to complete the corporate restructuring that has taken place at MTV India in the recent past. This has seen, along with Puthli, Natasha Malhotra moving to MTV Networks Asia as V-P content. As for the India operations, Kuruvilla was given an additional designation of executive V-P MTV Networks Asia to that of MD for India while Cyrus Oshidar, who was earlier V-P creative, was promoted to GM creative and content.
Thomas currently heads ad sales at SET for the entertainment part of their bouquet. He has been with Sony for the past three years. Before that Thomas was with the Indian Express.