ITV Studios has appointed Kunal Shah to the role of Sales Director, South Asia. 

Shah joins after spending five years at NBCUniversal, where he worked as Director of Sales Liaison (South Asia), managing all content licensing of linear and digital within India and other South Asian regions for the studio and its affiliates. Bringing with him a wealth of sales experience spanning 21 years in the industry, he will be based in Mumbai and report to Augustus Dulgaro, Executive Vice President – Distribution, Asia Pacific.  

Dulgaro said, “ITV Studios’ Indian business has grown significantly over the last few years due to our excellent content and the strength of our client relationships on the ground. Kunal’s authority and depth of experience in the Indian market is a welcome addition to ITV Studios and I am delighted to welcome him to the APAC team.”

Shah said: “I’m absolutely delighted to be joining ITV Studios and looking forward to seeing what more we can do in India. ITV Studios has some great stories to tell and it’s really exciting. There’s a whole lot of scope to localise the content and grow the business on licensing too.”

He will be responsible for identifying new business opportunities and maximising the value of ITV Studios’ 46,000+ hour-strong catalogue of finished programming across the region. Shah will also be tasked with driving revenue across the tape and scripted formats business, whilst managing the end to end sales process for one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing international distribution companies.

In his last role, he was instrumental in initiating a localisation project with Indian production companies to produce remakes of key shows and in 2018 he won an internal SharkTank Award at an APAC leadership summit. As well as working for Times of India, Zee Network and Star India, he has spent time at various start-ups. Previously, he worked as General Manager – Content at Times Internet & The Times of India Group heading content acquisition & partnerships, further to launch ‘follo’, BoxTV, TOI App, and as Director & Country Business Head at Qtelmedia where he launched over 24 different Mobile TV Channels for ‘Du’ telecom across UAE.

ITV Studios represents a rich catalogue of iconic scripted and non-scripted programming from producers within the ITV Studios group as well as selected independents. Titles include ITV’s highest-rated drama launch since 2006, The Pembrokeshire Murders as well as record-breaking Season Six of the Line of Duty and upcoming dramas Vigil and Showtrial from World Productions. Plus stylish spy story Harry Palmer: The Ipcress Files by Altitude Film and the epic founding of Rome drama Romulus from Cattleya, the second most-watched French drama Balthazar from Beaubourg Stories. In the non-scripted space, as well as the globally renowned entertainment brands such as Love Island, The Voice and The Graham Norton Show, ITV Studios also boasts a portfolio of high-quality factual content such as Attenborough’s Journey from Atlantic Productions, Trump’s America from the two-time Emmy® award-winner Deeyah Khan and Fuuse Films, Extreme Ice Railroad from Windfall Films and the up-coming major natural history series A Year on Planet Earth from Plimsoll Productions.