While there may be an outside chance of Punit being able to safeguard his position on the ZEE Entertainment board, his exit as MD of the company is imminent. So, who will head ZEE Entertainment? There is speculation galore. Bulk of the media industry rules out the possibility of anyone from the second rung of ZEE’s leadership being elevated to the role of CEO. The unanimous opinion is that the person would be an industry outsider. “The role of ZEE CEO is going to be the most challenging and the board has to pay an astronomically high salary to the potential candidate. The person has to first clean up the governance mess and then turn around the company. That’s going to be a herculean task,” says the former CEO of a leading media company. Invesco, apparently, has already hired an executive search firm to hunt for a CEO.

Sorting out governance issues would be key to finding a strategic investor. However, even if the governance issues are sorted, a large section of the industry believes that getting a strategic investor to buy ZEE will not be easy. “Disney has already invested in Star, AT&T Warner Bros is not interested in the TV business in India and I am not sure if Sony Pictures Network has the appetite to expand in India any further,” points out the former CEO of the media company. When ZEE promoters were looking out for strategic investors in 2019, they were known to be in advanced discussions with Sony Pictures Network and Comcast and the reason both the deals fell through were due to governance issues. “A company like Comcast which has no experience of doing business in India, will obviously be wary of investing in a company ridden with governance issues,” the former CEO further adds.