As President of  The Walt Disney Company India and Star India, K Madhavan drives the strategy and growth of the Company, responsible  for the vast Disney, Star, and Disney+ Hotstar businesses and operations  across General Entertainment, Sports,  Direct-to-consumer and the Studios business. This includes overseeing channel distribution and advertising sales, as well as a thriving local content production business with over 18,000 hours of original content every year across 70+ TV channels in 8 languages reaching around 700 million viewers a month.

He joined Star India in 2009 as its South Head. Under his leadership, the company built a thriving regional entertainment portfolio. Previously, he was the driving force behind Asianet’s growth as the undisputed leader in Malayalam with more than 50% of market share, serving as MD and CEO from 2000-2008. His vision for the regional language network led the company to set benchmarks in quality programming in South India.

Under Mr. Madhavan’s leadership Star India has further increased its market share in linear television business and is a clear market leader with ~10% higher marketshare compared to the nearest competitor. Even in the digital business, Disney + Hotstar is the undisputed #1 player in the country in terms of the number of subscribers on the platform.

He currently also serves as:

  • President of the Indian Broadcasting & Digital Foundation (IBDF) – India’s apex organization of television broadcasters comprising over 400 channels and Digital players that promotes the interests of the Industry. It collaborates with policy makes and regulators to provide research-based inputs and acts as an industry advocate on various fiscal, regulatory issues, to facilitate drafting of conducive policies and resolution of issues.
  • Director, BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) India – World’s largest television audience measurement service. It is the only ratings body for the broadcasting sector in India. BARC with its robust technology manages a transparent, accurate, and inclusive TV audience measurement system. It provides insights to power efficient media spends and content decisions in a highly dynamic and growing television sector.
  • Chairman, National Committee of Media & Entertainment CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) – a non-governmental trade association and advocacy group in India founded in 1895. CII partners with industry, Government, and civil society, through advisory and consultative processes and engages business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.

Prior to joing the media sector, He was in the banking and corporate finance sector.