Zee Media names Raktim Das chief executive and installs a revenue engine for a digital first sprint

The corner office at Zee Media has a new occupant and the mandate is not subtle. Build a digital first news machine that grows daily habit, multiplies revenue lines, and keeps trust intact. Raktim Das takes charge as chief executive and key managerial personnel with a practical mix of content judgment, platform savvy, and commercial discipline. The move follows the exit of Karan Abhishek Singh and signals a clean reset of targets and timelines.

Das arrives with two decades across India’s biggest news and entertainment brands. In his most recent innings he wore the chief growth hat for both digital and broadcast, a rare combination that forces you to care about minutes watched and money made in the same meeting. Earlier stints across Zee Entertainment, Network18, India Today and The Times of India shaped a playbook that values crisp content systems, cross functional squads, and a revenue plan that does not collapse when the algorithm sneezes.

The parallel appointment of Manish Seth as chief revenue officer sets the tone on monetisation. Seth has lived inside the numbers for more than twenty five years, building advertiser relationships that survive quarterly cycles and pushing digital lines that can double at scale when the funnel is tuned. A CEO who understands growth and a CRO who treats revenue as a product is a pairing built for a market where formats multiply and attention shifts by the hour.

What changes first in a newsroom when growth operators take charge. Expect a ruthless focus on daily active users, session depth, and return frequency rather than just monthly reach. Expect homepages and apps that open to live moments without lag, push alerts that behave like value not noise, and video stacks that respect low bandwidth users while still flattering premium screens. Expect explainers that land in two hundred words when the story is hot and long reads that hold their value for a full week. The team will treat formats like inventory and measure each piece on both impact and repeatability.

On the revenue side the menu expands beyond classic display. A modern news network needs a clean performance pipe for commerce partners, a brand studio that can ship modular series across verticals without crossing church and state, and live ad products that make breaking stories a safe place for marketers to show up. Pricing must reward attention not just impressions. Measurement must be transparent enough that a brand manager can see lift without hiring a data scientist.

Distribution becomes strategy, not afterthought. Platform feeds are a discovery engine. Owned and operated properties are the habit engine. The smartest networks build for both. Look for Zee Media to tune creator partnerships that move audience from social to site without clickbait fatigue. Look for regional language pushes that treat each market like a first class citizen with its own calendar and heroes. Look for product teams to reduce click debt across the app and make watch, read and listen equal citizens on the same rail.

Execution in the first one hundred days is the tell. Three public signals can separate promise from posture. A reliability dashboard that shows uptime and page speed on big news days. A newsroom rhythm that publishes a morning brief, a midday update, and an evening wrap with consistent timestamps and byline standards. A revenue cadence that launches one new high integrity format each month, whether it is a live ticker with brand safe slots, a recurring franchise anchored by data, or a commerce tested buying guide in categories where Zee Media already has authority.

The leadership duo inherits a market that rewards clarity and punishes drift. Trust is earned in the way corrections appear, the way headlines avoid heat without light, and the way sponsored content is labeled with respect for the reader. Growth is earned when content, product and sales share the same scoreboard. Governance is earned when partners see the rules before the deal, not after.

Risks are obvious and manageable. The ad market is choppy, platform rules change without notice, and talent churn can stall momentum. The answer is boring and powerful. Ship small improvements weekly. Protect the homepage experience like a sacred space. Incentivise teams on habit metrics as much as revenue. Publish principles on election coverage, paid partnerships and fact checks so the audience knows what to expect before the next spike.

Zee Media has put operators in the two chairs that matter most. If the next quarter shows faster sites, smarter alerts, cleaner live video and clearer ad products, the network will not just chase the news cycle. It will set it.

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