Five years since joining Reliance with a mission to drive synergies within their media businesses, Jyoti Deshpande has fructified the “Jiofication” of the content industry. For the last one year, Jio Studios has been driving consolidation in the fragmented sector. Deshpande built mini-studios via collaborations and created a structure to own intellectual property without inorganic acquisition, but through scale. That led to 100-plus stories across eight Indian languages, later made into films and web series by Jio Studios, making it a frontrunner in the content game.
The numbers speak for themselves. Web series, including Asur and Inspector Avinash, made under her leadership have garnered 300 million views each. She also took over as CEO of Viacom in mid-2020. The IPL digital rights worth ₹25,000 crore, the HBO alliance and the strategic tie-up for Jio Cinema, have all been executed under her tenure. The Jio Cinema app set a new streaming record with 32 million peak concurrent views during the IPL final between Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans in May, in the process netting in ₹2,300 crore from IPL ad revenue. Apart from being on the board of all media companies of RIL, Deshpande’s other roles include being the chair of Jio Saavn, the music streaming service; chair of Ficci media and entertainment, and a member of the prestigious Bafta (The British Academy of Film and Television Artists). She is also the first and only woman CEO of a ‘Big 4’ media company with full P&L responsibility. — Pavan Lall