Uday shankar star india biography of donald
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IPL, BCCI and ICC. Bodhi Tree - a strategic partnership designed to invest in consumer technology opportunities in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on India, is run by Murdoch and Shankar as co-chairs. By now many of Disney’s top executives had joined their former boss, Shankar at Viacom 18.
Uday Shankar had reportedly described the free streaming of IPL as the first of the many disruptions that would follow.
Past presidents of FICCI include stalwarts like Sangita Reddy, Subhrakant Panda, and Jyotsna Suri.
Uday Shankar is a true futurist with an instinct for what may work in the future and puts his single-minded focus into creating a dominant play in the domain.
Uday Shankar’s talent scouting has been legendary. It changed how cricket was packaged, consumed, and monetized, turning the IPL into the country’s most valuable sports property and the most prized media content and IP.
Under Shankar’s leadership, Star launched Hotstar — which eventually became Disney+ Hotstar — marking a significant leap into the OTT space and reshaping India’s digital entertainment landscape.
Controlled by Mukesh Ambani-led RIL, the joint venture (JV) will be owned 16.34% by RIL, 46.82% by Viacom18 and 36.84% by Disney. Late last Wednesday Reliance Industries Limited and Disney announced their much-awaited merger, heralding the creation of a US$ 8.5 billion media behemoth in India. Even before the first season of the league was broadcast in 2018, Hotstar had become the first local service to cross 100 million downloads on the Google Play Store.
As per the terms of the RIL-Disney agreement, it has dropped significantly. From building newsrooms to making billion-dollar digital bets, his leadership has redefined how the country watches, consumes, and engages with content.
Shankar began his career as a news producer at Zee and later worked with SAB Television Limited (Current Affairs division), Home TV, Sahara Samay, Aaj Tak, and Star News, where he rose to become CEO.
In 2007, he took over the reins at Star India and led its transformation from a Rs 1,600-crore company into an Rs 18,000-crore media powerhouse. In fact, at one point, Star India (later Disney India) was generating nearly Rs 6,000 crore in profit.
Uday's strategic vision, scale thinking, content understanding, laser-sharp focus, editorial instincts, and bold decisions have set new benchmarks in an industry increasingly dominated by Meta and Google.
One of his most transformative moves was acquiring the global broadcasting and digital rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) for Rs 16,347 crore — a decision many questioned at the time but one that proved to be a defining moment for Indian sports broadcasting.
After consolidating the network’s sports offering under ‘Star Sports’, he re-introduced India to the game of Kabaddi as a television sport with the launch of Pro-Kabbadi League. In May 2025, at the WAVES summit in Mumbai, he stated that television operates as a mature, household-based subscription service on large screens, while digital platforms represent an emerging, personal medium on individual devices, serving different purposes and evolutionary stages.[65][66] He warned that homogenizing regulations would "destroy the value in both businesses" by ignoring these differences, urging policymakers to allow competition and provide targeted support rather than imposing one-size-fits-all rules.[65][67]Shankar has criticized India's regulatory framework, particularly the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), for undermining the television sector's viability.
Little did anyone expect that a property acquired for nearly three times Disney’s outgo would be streamed free of cost on Jio Cinema.
Unsurprisingly, it landed with Jio Cinema. With the success of properties like Pro Kabbadi League (PKL), Premier Badminton League, Hockey India League and the Indian Super League (ISL), he helped even out the playing field for other sports in the country. The transaction is subject to regulatory, shareholder and other customary approvals and is expected to be completed in the last quarter of Calendar Year 2024 or first quarter of Calendar Year 2025.
While this may have been expected, the drastic devaluation of Star India is what stands out in the entire scheme of things.
Bodhi Tree soon partnered with Reliance and Viacom18, pledging Rs 13,500 crore (~$1.78 billion), with Shankar joining the Viacom18 board.
The journey came full circle in February 2024 when Reliance, Viacom18, and Disney announced the merger of their media operations.
In December 2020, Shankar decided to move on from the company bringing his successful innings to a halt.
In 2022, he co-founded Bodhi Tree with James Murdoch, an investment platform focused on high-growth sectors powered by technology. With IPL gone, the profitability-focused Burbank headquarters did not see much value in renewing HBO and Warner Bros. For perspective, other sources peg the total TV viewership share of the JV at 32%, against Zee Entertainment’s 17% and Culver Max Entertainment (Sony)’s 7%.
Today, the platform continues under the JioHotstar umbrella as part of the Reliance-Disney joint venture.
In 2017, Shankar was appointed President of 21st Century Fox Asia, and in 2018, following the global acquisition of Fox by Disney, he became President of The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific. He brought talent into media from outside the industry and turned them into world-class managers and entrepreneurs.
He has also been known to extract deep work from his teams—pushing them to their limits while offering the security of leadership that stands by them, even in failure.
Uday's success comes from his all-in approach.