MindShare’s Sunil Manocha returns for second stint at Nimbus Group

Sunil Manocha, managing director, MindShare, Sri Lanka, has returned to India. He has joined NEO SPORTS as senior vice-president, advertising revenue. As part of his new mandate, he will lead an over 20-member national team. Manocha will report to Shashi Kalathil, the recently appointed CEO of NEO SPORTS.

Manocha is back with the Nimbus Group after a year-long stint with MindShare. Prior to that, Sunil spent nearly 15 years at Nimbus in various functions ranging from advertising sales to acquisitions, business development to television programming.

Manocha’s experience in the arena of sports advertising sales covers three Cricket World Cups (1992, 1999 and 2003), apart from various other international sports events.

Shashi Kalathil, NEO SPORTS CEO-designate, remarks, “Manocha and his team at MindShare serviced the Pepsi account while I was at Pepsi, during which time he gained my respect for his customer orientation and ability to demonstrate and deliver value. It’s good that we will both be a part of the same team now.”

Manocha will be based out of Mumbai. Commenting on his move to back to the Nimbus Group, he says, “I had a good time during my earlier years at Nimbus. Besides, sports broadcasting is my passion, so to head this key function at NEO SPORTS was an appropriate decision for me.”

For the record, Nimbus Sports Broadcast has appointed STAR India to exclusively distribute its forthcoming bouquet of NEO sports channels. The first of its channels, the cricket-centric NEO SPORTS, is set to be launched in the last quarter of 2006. This will be followed by NEO SPORTS Plus, a sports entertainment channel which, too, is expected to be launched by the end of the year. STAR India has exclusive distribution rights for these two channels till 2010 and will also distribute any future sports channels from the NEO SPORTS stable.

© 2006 agencyfaqs!