Hotstar to YouTube, how Sanjay Gupta stayed in the OTT game and aced it

After 10 years as country manager of Star & Disney India, Gupta stepped down today to join Google as its country head

Everyone had warned Sanjay Gupta that it would be a fatal blunder to set up an over-the-top channel in the country. “Whoever heard of the idea said to me  — how can a traditional broadcaster like Star TV run a digital platform, which is a completely different ball game? It would be a disaster,” he says.  

But Gupta proved the industry wrong. With an active subscriber base of over 200 million, Hotstar has become a formidable player in India’s OTT space and is way ahead of any of its competitors (the nearest is Zee 5 with 75 million active viewers)