His appointment comes after Naveen Tahilyani stepped down from the role in May this year. More importantly, he will have to boost the morale of the company, which has had no leadership since Tahilyani stepped down.
Sivanandan, who was the president of Jio Mobile Digital Services, will take over the role from September 1, 2025. The development was conveyed to employees in an internal email.
He has collaborated closely with local leadership in international markets as well as the Disney+ team in the US to drive Disney+ Hotstar’s continuous expansion.
Sivanandan has prior experience in strategic business and leadership roles throughout international markets. He has spent more than 14 years at Google as the managing director and business head of Google Pay and Next Billion User Initiatives for their APAC region.
Before working at Disney+Hotstar, he headed Google Pay’s operations in India and was instrumental in starting the company from scratch. He played a key role in developing the overall strategy and driving the platform’s expansion in India.
Sivanandan began his professional journey with Star TV in 1996 in India, where he led the north India market for Channel V, where he oversaw the market for Channel V in northern India.
To manage this vacuum, N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, had constituted a management council comprising of six senior executives, who will report to the Board on a weekly basis.
“The management council, with inputs and guidance from the Board, will run Tata Digital until the new CEO is appointed,” read the email written by Chandrasekaran to the employees of Tata Digital, which Business Standard had reviewed.
The management council consists of Hardeep Guru, chief financial officer; Gaurav Hazrati, chief business officer – Financial Services; Satyam Mehra, chief strategy officer; Seshadri Narasimhan, chief business officer; Abhimanyu Lal, chief marketing officer; and Vinay Vaidya, chief technology officer.
