 "Former Godfrey Phillips COO joins News Corp")
News Corp, which acquired Mosaic Media's VCCircle Network in March last year, is beefing up its leadership team in India bringing on board former COO (domestic) at Godfrey Phillips Nita Kapoor.
Kapoor will begin her stint on April 4 and will be head of new ventures and CEO of VCCircle Network, where she will also manage the Manish Shah-led BigDecisions.com, a portal News Corp acquired in 2014.
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Raju Narisetti, senior vice-president (strategy), News Corp, in an email that Business Standard has access to, informed his colleagues that Kapoor would be based in Noida and would work closely with News Corp support functions and executives. He also said in the mail Shah, head of BigDecisions.com, and all relevant executive and news leadership in both organisations would report directly to Kapoor. Kapoor started her career at Mudra Communications where in her 16-year stint, she worked on a portfolio of brands, including Nestle, Rasna, Vimal and Dabur.
After that she joined Godfrey Phillips in 2002, where she served across functions like communication (brand and corporate), marketing, sales and distribution, operations, product development, corporate affairs, public relations and government liaison.
Following the split of the entertainment and media business of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 2013 into the new News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, Star India, the Indian arm of 21st Century Fox, has been involved only with the entertainment business in the country. News Corp's (the media spin-off from the split) presence in India is through part acquisitions in entities like PropTiger, the VCCircle Network and BigDecisions.com.
The erstwhile News Corporation had a presence in Indian television news until 2012 in the form of Star News. The channel was started in 1998 through an association between Star India and NDTV. When that association came to an end in 2003, and the then government introduced a regulation capping foreign equity in news business at 26 per cent, Star tied up with ABP for a 74:26 partnership in the channel.
In 2012, Star exited the venture, selling its stake to ABP, and the channel which was known as Star News was subsequently renamed ABP News.
In an email response to queries sent by Business Standard, Narisetti said, "News Corp is not interested in the TV business in India."
