Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) has appointed Saurav Adhikari as an Additional Director in the category of Non-Executive Director of the company, with effect from November 29, 2024.
As per the company, his appointment is subject to the approval of the members of the company.
Adhikari is a senior global business leader with four decades of domain expertise in global businesses and markets, across technology, FMCG, and consumer durables sectors as an operations, general management and investment specialist. In over two decades in the technology sector with HCL (2000 to 2019), he has held multiple leadership roles as the Founding President of HCL’s startup enterprise networking firm, led a team that established what has now become a multi-hundred million dollar IT-enabled services (‘ITES’) business, served as President of HCL’s ITES North American business, and as President of Global Corporate Strategy.
He has worked on several multi-billion-dollar inorganic investments in technology and software, carve-outs of multiple enterprise software product suites, joint ventures with global majors, all to transform and reinvent HCL’s business. He was instrumental in strategising HCL’s pivoting of its business model to a leading intellectual property led solutions company. In his technology role, he had built deep inroads into global private equity and VC firms, while creating large, successful, value-based partnerships between HCL and private equity owned technology businesses, which are considered groundbreaking in the industry.
At HCL, he held various executive positions, the last being President, Global Strategy, working directly with the Founder and Chairman with oversight across the group’s business, as well as the not-for-profit Shiv Nadar Foundation. His prior experience also includes several senior global leadership and executive roles across Unilever, as Vice President (VP) at PepsiCo and Group SEB as CEO of the India business.
Furthermore, he is currently the Founder and Senior Partner at Indus Tech Edge Fund I, a growth fund focused on globalising India’s vibrant technology ecosystem. He is the former Chairman of NASDAQ listed Vahanna Tech Edge Acquisition I Corp (A Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC)) and has after a successful DeSPAC/merger moved on to the board of NASDAQ listed Roadzen Inc (ticker RDZN).
Adhikari also serves as a board member of Goodricke Group, Accelya Solutions India, (both listed in India), and Bridgeweave, UK, an AI based Fintech firm. He works as a technology advisor and investor with interests across AI based fintech and healthcare firms, as well as analytics, IoT and logistics firms. He also serves as a Senior Advisor in the Shiv Nadar Foundation and is a Board Member of the Shiv Nadar University.
