Gautam Adani-promoted Adani Enterprises finally decided to enter the media business, which would make the Adanis emulate what some successful corporate houses — like the Reliance Industries, Aditya Birla group and the Mahindra group — in India have already done. All these business houses are not traditional media groups like the Times of India group or the ABP group or even the Sun TV group.
Late last week Adani Enterprises said it has inducted veteran news journalist Sanjay Pugalia as the CEO and editor-in-chief to lead the group’s media initiatives.
Pugalia will report to Pranav Adani and work closely with a CEO-level executive Sudipta Bhattacharya, while extending his support to the corporate communications team, a statement from the Adani group said.
“We look forward to leveraging Sanjay’s wide ranging expertise in media, communications and branding across the Adani Group’s diverse range of businesses and in our nation building initiatives. We welcome Sanjay Pugalia and his family to the Adani Parivaar and wish him great success in his new role,” the statement stated.
A day before the Adanis made the announcement of Pugalia joining their group, he had resigned from digital news publisher The Quint as President and Editorial Director. The Quint was started by Pugalia’s former boss at Network18, Raghav Behl.
A veteran newsperson, Pugalia has worked with organisations like the BBC, Australian Nine Network’s Indian joint venture, CNBC Awaz, Business Standard and Navbharat Times.
The buzz in the market is that the Adanis would prefer to buyout an existing media venture, rather than start from scratch. Owning a newspaper doesn’t seem to be in their radar, a person familiar with the Adani group said, adding that the media foray could include presence in TV (buy out a company already having necessary government permissions) and online.
That Pugalia pre-dominantly has a news background in Hindi and English languages, broadly indicates that the Adanis, probably, are also not interested in general entertainment TV — unless it’s aimed at bailing out financially beleaguered friends.
The Indian media landscape is certainly changing and is up for some interesting times.