Banijay Asia believes in taking risks, innovating, pushing boundaries and having fun while doing all this. The team includes the best hustlers with a hunger to learn and do more.

Deepak Dhar

Founder & Group CEO of Banijay Asia & EndemolShine India

Deepak Dhar is the man credited with being the key driving force behind content production in India. Starting his career as senior producer at MTV, he went on to work with Star TV and then moved to Endemol India in 2006. Within a span of 3 years he was promoted to MD and CEO of Endemol Shine India. He stepped down as managing director of EndemolShine India in December 2017 and was instrumental in helping the company grow across the film, television and digital units, with more than 250 shows and 10,000 plus hours of programming. His long career also includes leadership roles to drive content strategies at Star TV, Channel V and MTV.

Rishi Negi

Group Chief Operating Officer, Banijay Asia & Endemol Shine India

Mrinalini Jain

Group Chief Development Officer, Banijay Asia & Endemol Shine India

Shyam Rathi

Group Chief Financial Officer, Banijay Asia & Endemol Shine India

Finance and Corporate Strategy professional with over 7 years of experience in Media and Entertainment Industry, Shyam has worked in numerous content based organisations.
He had developed and executed strategies and plans to fulfill business objectives with bottom-line impact in some of the biggest content giants in India like Sony Pictures Networks, Endemol Shine, CA Media, etc. He is a True problem-solver and ``Big Picture`` thinker in all aspects of his professional life.

Lalit Sharma

EVP & Head Legal

Fiona Machado

AVP & Head - Human Resource, Administration & IT

Girish Balan

EVP - Commercial & Production - Non Scripted

Girish K Balan, started his career from Mumbai working in Channel V (Star Tv) in the year 2002. After gaining 5 years of work experience joined Sony Tv and managed shoots for MAX, SAB AND PIX at profitable budgets for 2 years. His expertise is constantly sought after in media. He also gained experience working for for BIGG BOSS -3 at Endemol India Pvt Ltd. He has worked with ASIAN TOUR MEDIA (Singapore), TRANS WORLD SPORT and IMG SPORT MEDIA. In the year 2011, he joined *Colosceum Media Pvt Ltd as Vice President, production and operation and gained further more work knowledge.
Presently he is working with Banijay Asia as Senior Vice President,2018.
Girish is an astute and result oriented professional with rich experiences of over 20years in Television, Sports as well as Films. He is a keen planner and well versed with team building. An effective communicator with analytical, problem solving and organizational abilities. Like listening to music and he is a fitness freak.

Rajesh Chadha

Chief Operating Officer- Scripted

A media veteran with an exemplary career spanning over 27 years in the M&E industry, Rajesh has spearheaded projects at prominent companies like Endemol, BBC Studios and RBNL. Leading the content execution for the award winning OTT series - Criminal Justice and Out of Love at BBC Studios, he was also involved in Ajay Devgn’s digital debut, Rudra and Guilt & Press in early 2022.
At Banijay Asia, Rajesh is responsible for developing the scripted slate for Banijay Asia.

Khuzema Haveliwala

Creative Director

Khuzema is experience in both Scripted and Non-Scripted programming as the Director/Creative Director for over 11 years.
Life Mein Ek Baar on Fox Life, Coke Studio and Unplugged for MTV India and the more recent Comicstaan on Amazon Prime are some of the Non-scripted shows that he has enjoyed the most to be a part of. Heroes on Channel V was the first scripted show where he was nominated in the Best Director Category at the Indian Television Academy Awards (ITA) while directing Swim Team which was one of the longest running scripted format (246 episodes) made him win the hearts of India’s youth. Niche Programming, developing and directing content for the Youth is what catches Khuzema's interest the most and, of course, juggling between Scripted and Non-scripted has always nurtured his skills and given him a more holistic view on the craft we do.

Karan Devsharan Bhatia

Creative Director

From inquisitive beginnings on linear TV in 2008 to leading projects for OTT, Karan has been a part of content evolution in the Unscripted Vertical for the last 14 years.
His vision is to create engaging Interactive content that brings an exciting change in viewing habits of the consumer.
From creating a pitch with a seed of thought till delivering the show on air, both development & execution are his strengths.
Across his career, Karan has tapped into various genres such as Reality TV, Sports, Comedy, Adventure, Food, Dating etc. and has gained expertise for adapting international formats like Master-chef, Fear Factor, Bigg Brother, Ice Road Truckers, and creating original content with successful shows like Mission Frontline (Winner 26th Asian Television Awards – Best Infotainment) , Comicstaan, Arrived, Into the wild with Bear Grylls , Taste Match (Winner 22nd Asian Television Awards – Best Talk Show) for the Indian Market.
Having been with Banijay Asia since its inception in 2018, Karan has earned a reputation for being someone who brings new dynamics into broadcasts, remains in-tune with current trends & viewer interests.

Vibhas Singh Gautam

AVP - Business and Content

With a varied and near-nomadic career of over 25 years across industries, Vibhas firmly believes that storytelling is his final calling and the content business his final destination.

A National Institute of Fashion Technology alumini, he has spent over a decade in fashion, apparel retail, brand management and advertising, working for the best clothing brands in the world and eventually rising to the position of Vice President - creatives and marketing (for the youth streetwear brand Riot). In the 13th year of his arguably successful career, he decided to quit and walk the clichéd path of ‘following his passion’.

In the last 12 years of his hustle in the entertainment business out of which 7 were spent as a freelancer, he has written and directed an award winning short(In Continuum, winner best short at RIFF, Jaipur, 2015), written an Indie Marathi film(Kalti, 2016), been a creative producer on about 15 TV films for the Zee Theatre project streaming on Zee5 where classic stage plays like Henry Ibsen’s Dolls House, Rabindra Nath Tagore’s Chokher Bali(which he also wrote the Hindi adaptation for), Mahesh Dattani’s Final Solutions & The Big Fat City, Ranjit Kapur’s Wrong Turn and many others were adapted for the screen, wrote the period political drama series ‘Union of India’ (being produced by BANIJAYAsia & streaming soon on Jio Cinema) and freelanced as a writer and development resource with BANIJAY Asia before coming on board full time in January,2019.

Although an all-rounder who is equally at ease in writing rooms and filming sets, his real interest and strengths lie in developing factual content, book adaptations and human stories. You can find him deep diving into books or the internet researching on ideas if he is not catching up on the latest OTT release.

Priyal Thaker

Lead Legal Counsel

With over a decade of experience in the field of IP in India, Singapore, ASEAN, and other global markets, Priyal navigates legal strategies to business affairs for securing legal clearances and alignments. She is responsible for multi-layered negotiations, dodging risks and contractual closures of all Banijay Asia deals with co-producers, talents/artists, TV broadcasters, OTT players, and global streamers. Priyal also leads on format shows licensing and adaptations with Banijay Rights (“Survivor”), CBS Viacom (Paramount Pictures) (“The Good Wife”), ITV Studios (“Voice”), Armoza Formats (“Vertige”), and NBCUniversal, to name a few. With Double Master's qualifications in IP and International Business Law, she is invited as a guest to lecture at universities in India and overseas and writes legal articles for AsiaIP & other publications. Besides work, she is lost in her books, animal welfare, some travel plans, and building her personal brand.