MUMBAI: In a media industry obsessed with the limelight, Mahesh Shetty remains an anomaly. No splashy interviews, no endless conference panels, no constant social media updates. Instead, a man who lets numbers and results do the talking. Now, as he takes charge of revenue at JioStar Entertainment, succeeding Ajit Varghese who departs for Madison, Shetty is poised to script the next big chapter of his career.
For industry insiders, this move feels less like a surprise and more like a natural progression. Over nearly three decades, Shetty has quietly built a résumé that stretches across the most competitive corners of Indian business: FMCG, radio, broadcast television, live events, and OTT streaming. Each stint has added another layer to his arsenal, sharpening a leadership style best described as calm, precise, and relentlessly focused on outcomes.
When Shetty joined Viacom18 in April 2019, he was already regarded as a heavy hitter in sales and monetisation. Over the next five years, he transformed revenue operations, straddling linear television, Jiocinema, Viacom18 Live, and the Consumer Products and Licensing divisions. But it was the December 2024 merger with Disney Star that truly tested his mettle.
Handed responsibility for a formidable empire of 90‑plus TV channels and JioHotstar, Shetty got to work without fanfare. While the spotlight stayed firmly on content deals and boardroom machinations, he was busy engineering the rise of the Large Client Sales (LCS) portfolio. Under his watch, LCS swelled until it accounted for over 80 per cent of JioStar’s entertainment revenues, an achievement industry peers describe as “quietly spectacular.”
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Shetty has never been a fixture on the media circuit. A quick Youtube search throws up barely two interviews in decades of leadership. For him, visibility isn’t the goal revenue is. Colleagues often describe his style as understated but laser‑focused: the kind of leader who invests in people and processes rather than profiles.
And yet, in boardrooms and client meetings, his presence is anything but muted. Those who have negotiated with him speak of a professional who can combine charm with steely precision, moving effortlessly from big‑picture strategy to the finest of details.
At JioStar Entertainment, Shetty now steps into the role at a pivotal moment. He continues to oversee LCS while expanding his remit to drive topline performance across verticals. Reporting directly to him are trusted lieutenants Anuradha Mathu Agrawal, Srijith Jagdish, Shubhra Sethi, and Kingshuk Mitra. The wider reporting structure remains unchanged, a signal of stability even amidst transition.
But the challenges ahead are anything but routine. India’s entertainment market is in flux, with digital consumption soaring, advertisers demanding sharper ROI, and post‑cookie targeting reshaping the playbook. JioStar itself is betting aggressively on original content, hybrid monetisation models, and cutting‑edge audience intelligence. For Shetty, this means crafting not just a revenue plan but a reinvention of value creation in India’s content economy.
Part of what makes Shetty uniquely suited to the task is the breadth of his experience. Before Viacom18, he spent 12 years with Radio Mirchi, rising to the role of COO, where he built some of radio’s most successful monetisation strategies. Before that, he logged more than a decade at Pepsico India, beginning as an assistant marketing manager in 1995 after earning his B.Com and MBA in Marketing. There, he cut his teeth in senior sales and marketing roles heading marketing for Gujarat, and later serving as GM for National On‑Premise Sales.
This mix of FMCG discipline, radio agility, broadcast heft, and OTT dynamism has forged a leader uniquely comfortable navigating JioStar’s complex entertainment revenue landscape. From regional advertisers looking to tap India’s heartland, to global partnerships eyeing scale and reach, Shetty has seen and sold it all.
For JioStar, the stakes could not be higher. With platforms like JioHotstar pushing for scale and viewership habits fragmenting across screens, Shetty’s challenge will be to stay ahead of the curve: innovating in ad formats, deepening client relationships, and ensuring measurement keeps pace with expectations of accountability.
If the past is any indication, he won’t be chasing headlines or soundbites while doing it. But in boardrooms and balance sheets, his impact will be impossible to ignore.
For now, all eyes are on Mahesh Shetty not because he craves the spotlight, but because he knows exactly how to deliver when it matters most.
