Ferzad Palia

Ferzad Palia is the Head of VOOT Select, Youth, Music, and English Entertainment, Viacom18. Ferzad Palia is the Senior EVP and head of all SVOD services (including VOOT Select and VOOT Kids) and International expansion for VOOT. He has completed his education from the H.R. College of Commerce and Economics and the University of Mumbai, where he completed his Master of Business Administration (MBA)-Marketing and Marketing Management. He began working as a project manager at J. Walter Thompson Worldwide in April 1998 and continued till February 2004. He then joined CNBC-TV18 as senior marketing manager from March 2004 till November 2004. After that, he joined Viacom18 Network Media Private Limited. He has worked at Vh1 India as Senior Vice President and GM from November 2004 till December 2011. In January 2012, he joined English Entertainment as the Executive Vice President and Head. His work was to conceptualise and move ahead with the organisation’s venture into English General Entertainment. His work boosted and helped to grow the network’s relationships with content studios across the world for acquisitions and strategic partnerships. In 2012, Comedy Central had launched and COLORS Infinity (an English GEC) in 2015 with disruptive content & Marketing strategies. Ferzad Palia also had a part in the production of these entertainment networks. Both these networks rose to be leading in the market and Viacom18 gained over 50% control in the market share of English Entertainment in India.

He then rose to be the Senior Executive Vice president and Head- Youth, Music and English Entertainment. During his tenure, he expanded and reorganized the Youth & Music business in order to leverage the opportunity of being at the intersection of technology, content & clients. During this time, Viacom also launched MTV Beats, a Hindi Music channel, introduced new lines of business-'Brand Studio’ and ‘MTV Music Project’. Both are aimed at Branded Content Partnerships & Original Music, respectively.

There was a significant rise in the original content on MTV through new formats and partnerships around sports, music, Bollywood, and gaming. It led to an increase in consumption across television, OTT, and Social media platforms. The media group has seen a rise in its category shares, and the top line has more than doubled after 2016. He continues to work on the English Entertainment business, which is a dominant force with over 50% of the market shares and also the pioneers of original English language content in India.

Ferzad has led the progression of the network’s Youth, Music, and English Entertainment business for the past years. More recently, when he launched VOOT Select, that has already raced to add over a million subscribers within a year. He will now look to grow Viacom18’s SVOD and International digital businesses cohesively. In his new role, he has been tasked with the plan of expanding its digital subscription businesses.