Star India CEO Uday Shankar has been honoured as the year's best leader among chief executives of multinational companies at the Forbes India Leadership Awards (FILA) 2015.
The award marks a break from convention at FILA, with Mr. Shankar becoming the first MNC head of a media and entertainment company to receive the honour.
Mr. Shankar was awarded the Best CEO of a Multinational Company, after a thorough and exhaustive vetting process by an illustrious jury of his peers. The jury comprised the likes of industry captains Harsh Mariwala, Chairman, Marico Ltd, Naina Lal Kidwai, Chairman, HSBC India and Director, HSBC Asia Pacific, Noshir Kaka, Managing Director, Mckinsey India and Sanjay Nayar, CEO, KKR India.
He was selected from amongst a shortlist of nominees that included leaders of Hindustan Unilever, Samsung, ABB India and Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.
Accepting the award, Mr Uday Shankar said, “I feel enormously humbled to be receiving this honour on behalf of Star India. We are a multinational company albeit with an Indian heart. Our endeavour has been to harness the transformational power of media to foster social change and thereby inspire a billion imaginations.''
Mr. Shankar, further added, "I would not be here receiving this award, if I was not a journalist - that introduced me to the value of being socially relevant and to see the nuances that the untrained eye could easily miss. It also showed me that the value in life comes from doing big things - the headlines. And finally, it taught me to do the right thing, not be intimidated by competition because everybody makes as many mistakes."
Forbes India in its editorial said that the Best CEO of a Multinational Company was awarded to Mr. Uday Shankar for positioning Star India as India’s largest television broadcaster by number of channels and viewership, through some bold business decisions. Uday Shankar is also leading Star India’s foray into future-looking businesses like hotstar, the digital entertainment platform and the Star Sports Pro Kabaddi League.
Instituted in 2011, the Forbes India Leadership Awards honour outstanding leaders across nine categories. The 2015 edition of the Awards focused on transformational leadership, recognising individuals and organizations who have achieved success through their vision, foresight and business ethics.
The award for the Best CEO of a Multinational Company specifically recognizes the leader of a multinational company who has successfully used the Indian market as a test bed for significant emerging market innovation and has in the process discovered a whole new way of doing business.
