Former Google executive Sunil Rayan to head Disney Hotstar India

MUMBAI: Star and Disney India has tapped senior Google executive, Sunil Rayan, to head its video streaming service, Disney+ Hotstar in India as its president.

In his latest role, Rayan served as managing director of Google Cloud for Games, at the internet giant’s headquarter at Mountain View, California in US.

In an internal memo to staff, Uday Shankar, chairman Disney & Star India and president, Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific, made the announcement.

“With over 20 years of experience, Sunil brings a rare mix of product engineering and commercial expertise. He has a stellar track record of scaling and growing complex businesses. Sunil is a truly global executive, bringing experiences from across the world – having scaled businesses in the US, setting up large teams in South East Asia, and working with super app players in Latin America,” Shankar wrote.

Ryan has spent the last 7.5 years at Google and has also headed its Mobile App ads business till July 2018, before moving to Google Cloud.

Presently based in California, he put in his papers in April and will be relocating to Mumbai.

The position of head of Disney+ Hotstar (formerly Hotstar) has been lying vacant since CEO Ajit Mohan quit in later 2018 to join Facebook as India head.

Ryan will report to Shankar, who has been overseeing the digital service since December last year, when Sanjay Gupta, former managing director of Star and Disney India, quit to join Google India as country manager.

“Five years ago, we set out to disrupt the way India consumed content and that mission has turned out to be totally revolutionary,” Shankar said. “Sunil is an exciting talent with global accomplishments and I am very excited to have him lead the talented Disney+ Hotstar team. At Disney+ Hotstar India, we are on a mission to create the country's largest and most advanced platform for curated content, and Sunil is just the right person to drive that ambition.”

Rayan has also worked at McKinsey & Co., IBM, iGate Mastech and Infosys.