Ajit Varghese: The man in charge of driving sales at Disney Star

Ajit Varghese, who has been appointed as Head of Sales for the network (both linear+ digital), will assume a position that was vacant for almost nine months.

Varghese takes over from Nitin Bawankule who left the position in April last year. He comes in just before IPL 16, scheduled in March this year, the biggest sporting property that attracts the highest investments.

At Disney Star, his major challenge will be to monetize this property given the fact that there is an economic slowdown and advertisers are cutting their budgets. Varghese will be responsible for driving the overall advertising revenue of Disney Star’s television and digital businesses. He will also be leading transformative sales and channel strategies, creating alliances, and business development.

Reporting to K Madhavan, President & Country Manager, Disney Star, Varghese will be developing the long-term vision and the strategic direction of the organisation.

Varghese has been associated with the media and advertising industry for three decades. He started his career in 1999 with Madison World as Head of Planning for Coca-Cola. In 2000, he was promoted as Head of Business, where he made significant changes in the Coca-Cola business plans with a range of initiatives. He went on to become COO of Madison Infinity division in the year 2004. Under his leadership, the company had a growth rate of 40% from 2004-2006. They acquired many clients like Mcdonald's, Marico (FMCG), Asian Paints, Cadburys, TVS, Tata Tea, Dominos, and Axis Bank amongst many others on a retainer basis.

In 2006, Varghese moved to WPP, where he had a tenure of 13 years helming different roles. He was hired as Managing Director of Maxus India, which later merged with MEC globally to form Wavemaker in 2018.  Varghese was promoted as CEO of Asia Pacific at Maxus India in 2014.

In 2017, he was promoted to Global President, Wavemaker, and was based out of London. Under his leadership, the company oversaw KPI management for 60+ countries. In 2019, he helped position Wavemaker as "Agency of the Future". 

Varghese moved to ShareChat and Moj as the Chief Commercial Officer in 2020 right before the pandemic when creator economy became a major part of income generation. He drove the company’s marketing efforts to attain growth in user base and creator brand perception.