Viacom18 has announced significant additions to its technology leadership team as it aims to scale up its OTT platform, JioCinema, into one of the country’s leading digital content destinations. These strategic hires are intended to boost tech expertise, agility, and speed to market as the company continues to expand rapidly and deliver top-notch digital experiences.
Bharath Ram joins as Chief Product Officer and Ad Tech Platform Lead. He brings extensive experience from Flipkart, where he led Product and Engineering for key initiatives including user growth, retention, new product innovation, and new categories. Prior to Flipkart, Bharath worked with Instagram’s core product team in the US, focusing on ad revenue, ad auction systems, ad personalization, user experience with ads, and advertiser experience. He also worked at Amazon Prime Video, where he led personalization and other critical areas. Bharath holds an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Ohio State University and an MBA from the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He will report to Kiran Mani, CEO – Digital, Viacom18.
Vijay Sheshadri joins as Chief Technical Advisor. With over 25 years of industry experience, Vijay has an extensive background in enterprise security, e-commerce, and large-scale distributed systems. He was an Engineering Fellow at Swiggy and has held key roles at Amazon and Symantec, where he built several enterprise security solutions and cloud infrastructure services. Vijay was the lead architect for Symantec’s Reputation-based Security technology, which won the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award in 2010.
Shoury Bhardwaj joins as Engineering Leader for App Experience, Search, Recommendations, Data, and App Backend Platforms. Shoury comes from Flipkart, where he spent 12 years working on various critical areas of e-commerce. In his most recent role, he led the product and engineering teams for new business initiatives. Shoury is passionate about developer productivity, agile methodologies, and creating enduring technical and product blueprints. He holds an engineering degree from NIE, Mysore, and an MS from BITS, Pilani.
Commenting on these appointments, a Viacom18 spokesperson said, “We are thrilled to welcome Bharath, Vijay, and Shoury to the Viacom18 family. Their expertise and leadership will be instrumental as we embark on the next phase of our ambitious growth journey. These appointments reflect our commitment to building a world-class tech platform that delivers the best content and an unparalleled experience to our consumers.”
