Mirchi has appointed Chandan Das as Vice President and Business Director, Karnataka, with full P&L responsibility across five radio stations. Based in Bengaluru, Das will drive integrated growth across radio, digital, social, and experiential platforms, leveraging his extensive leadership experience at Disney Star and JioStar.
Chandan Das’s appointment as Vice President and Business Director at Mirchi marks a significant leadership move at a time when India’s audio and radio ecosystem is undergoing a rapid transformation. Based in Bengaluru, Das steps into a role that places him at the centre of Mirchi’s Karnataka operations, with end-to-end profit and loss responsibility across five radio stations in the state. More than a market-level leadership assignment, the role reflects Mirchi’s intent to deepen its platform-led strategy across radio, digital audio, video, and experiential formats, aligning legacy broadcast strength with new-age monetisation opportunities.
Karnataka, with Bengaluru as its media and technology nerve centre, represents one of Mirchi’s most dynamic markets. It is home to a young, digitally fluent audience, a thriving startup ecosystem, and brands that increasingly expect measurable, integrated media solutions rather than siloed advertising buys. Das’s mandate is to drive growth across content, digital monetisation, MPing, social ecosystems, brand partnerships, and experiential activations, creating a more unified offering for advertisers and listeners alike. The emphasis on integration signals a shift from radio being viewed as a standalone medium to becoming part of a broader, multi-touchpoint engagement platform.
Mirchi’s evolution over the past few years has been shaped by this very idea of convergence. While FM radio remains a powerful mass medium, particularly in regional markets, audience consumption habits are fragmenting across devices and formats. Audio streaming, short-form video, social media, and on-ground experiences now coexist with traditional broadcast, often reinforcing one another. In this context, Das’s role is as much about cultural and organisational alignment as it is about revenue targets. He is expected to bring together creative, sales, digital, and experiential teams to operate with a single, market-focused vision.
Das arrives at Mirchi with a career that has been deeply rooted in building and scaling media revenue businesses across platforms. Most recently, he served as Director – Digital & TV Revenue Generation (South) at JioStar, where he was responsible for driving monetisation strategies across television and digital properties in southern markets. The role demanded a nuanced understanding of regional advertising dynamics, client expectations, and the increasingly blurred lines between TV and digital inventory. His work at JioStar followed a long and impactful tenure at Disney Star, where he held multiple leadership positions, including Region Head – South & East.
At Disney Star, Das was part of a leadership cohort that oversaw some of India’s most influential television networks. His experience spans scaling advertising and revenue across channels such as Star Plus and Star Bharat in the Hindi general entertainment space, Star Jalsha and Jalsha Movies in the Bengali market, Star Gold in the movie genre, and Disney Kids in the children’s segment. This breadth of exposure gave him a rare vantage point across languages, genres, and audience cohorts, as well as an understanding of how content, distribution, and sales strategies need to be tailored to different cultural contexts.
A defining aspect of Das’s professional journey has been his focus on cross-platform monetisation and data-led decision-making. During his years at Disney Star, the industry was already grappling with the rise of digital video, changing measurement systems, and advertisers demanding greater accountability. Das was involved in developing scalable media solutions that allowed brands to extend their presence across television and digital touchpoints, using data insights to optimise reach and frequency. This approach is particularly relevant to Mirchi’s current ambitions, as the company seeks to offer advertisers more than spot-based radio advertising.
In Karnataka, Das’s challenge will be to translate Mirchi’s national strategy into market-specific execution. Bengaluru’s advertisers range from global technology giants and unicorn startups to local retailers and regional brands, each with distinct communication needs. Radio continues to offer unmatched local reach and immediacy, but advertisers increasingly want campaigns that live beyond the airwaves. Integrating on-air content with digital audio, social media amplification, influencer collaborations, and on-ground experiences can create campaigns that are both impactful and measurable. Das’s background in managing complex, multi-market portfolios positions him well to navigate these expectations.
Another key dimension of his role is content-led growth. Mirchi has long been known for its strong RJ-driven programming and localised content that resonates with city audiences. As consumption shifts towards podcasts, short videos, and interactive formats, content strategy becomes central to monetisation. Das is expected to work closely with programming teams to ensure that content innovations are aligned with brand opportunities without compromising editorial integrity. This balance is critical in maintaining listener trust while opening new revenue streams.
The mention of MPing and social ecosystems in his mandate points to Mirchi’s focus on community-driven engagement. Modern media brands are increasingly measured by the strength of their communities, not just their reach numbers. For Mirchi, this could mean leveraging RJ personalities, local events, digital-first content, and social platforms to build loyal audience clusters that brands can meaningfully engage with. Experiential activations, in particular, offer opportunities to bring together on-air promotion, digital buzz, and real-world interaction, creating campaigns that are difficult to replicate on purely digital platforms.
Das’s appointment also reflects a broader trend in Indian media companies of bringing in leaders with hybrid television-digital experience to steer legacy platforms into the future. His career trajectory mirrors the industry’s own evolution, from the dominance of linear television to a more fragmented, data-driven media environment. At Mirchi, this perspective will be crucial in reimagining radio’s role within a larger audio and content ecosystem that includes streaming, video, and live experiences.
For Mirchi, Karnataka is not just another regional market but a testing ground for new ideas and formats that can be scaled nationally. Success here could inform strategies in other states, particularly in South India, where linguistic diversity and strong regional identities demand localised approaches. Das’s familiarity with southern markets, built over years of leadership roles, gives him an advantage in understanding these nuances.
As he takes charge in Bengaluru, Das inherits a brand with strong recall and cultural relevance, but also one that must continuously reinvent itself to stay competitive. The task ahead involves aligning teams, sharpening offerings, and demonstrating to advertisers that radio, when combined with digital and experiential layers, can deliver outcomes that rival larger media platforms. In an industry where change is constant, Das’s appointment signals Mirchi’s intent to stay ahead of the curve by investing in leadership that understands both scale and specificity, tradition and transformation.
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