Sakal appoints LS Krishnan as business head; promotes Uday Jadhav as director, corporate development

The Sakal Group has made a couple of noteworthy movements at its top management level about a week ago. While LS Krishnan has been brought on board as business head, Sakal Papers; Uday Jadhav has been promoted as director, corporate development. Both Krishnan and Jadhav will report to Abhijit Pawar, managing director.

Earlier, Krishnan was president, Mudra Max.

While Krishnan terms his new office whereabouts as 'location agnostic', Jadhav will work out of the Shivajinagar office in Pune.

When quizzed about the re-structuring, Jadhav tells afaqs!, "As Sakal is emerging from its past identity of a newspaper company to that of a media company, restructuring was the need of the day."

He adds that he will head editorial upgradation initiatives such as content alignment as per the TG (target group), redesigning of all publications, development of new content projects to support overall business initiatives, multimedia coordination, public connect activities and strengthening of content quality and systems/processes.

"I will be responsible for making a cost budget of the editorial departments and allocating it to different activities/initiatives as per business priorities. Additionally, I will be responsible for finding new business opportunities to leverage the existing media businesses," Jadhav explains.

He adds that this is a great achievement for him. "I had started my career as a junior executive and have moved on to the director level - it's been an exciting journey!" he enthuses.

In a conversation with afaqs!, Krishnan says, "It is a well respected group and the challenge to grow the business drew me into it," adding that his immediate responsibilities in the new role are to understand the business nuances in the shortest period of time, listen to the stake holders - including consumers, business associates and employees - and thereafter, initiate the action plan.

"I am excited about this move as it offers an opportunity to run a challenging business. The consumer is changing dramatically and I am excited about working in many geographies of Maharashtra and making the group stronger and impregnable as far as competition is concerned," he adds.

Krishnan graduated in Economics (Hons) from Delhi University and went on to complete MBA in marketing management from JBIMS. He started his career at The Times of India (Response) with an ad sales profile and left the organisation as senior manager to join HTA's (Hindustan Thompson Associates; now JWT) Fulcrum to head buying.

Four years later, Krishnan ventured into the online space - he was a founding member of online agency, Mediaturf. Subsequently, he went on to head the Tata account at Rediffusion Y&R and later, occupied the post of president at radio station Hit 95 FM, Delhi. From there, he moved on to Mudra Max.

Jadhav's career graph spans 15 years, most of which has been at the Sakal group. After completing post graduation in business administration, he joined Sakal as a management trainee in the circulation department in December 1995 at Kolhapur. He was promoted as marketing officer in October 1997, handling all circulation, sales and promotional activities within the Kolhapur region.

In July 1998, Jadhav was made circulation manager for the Kolhapur region and was the head of the circulation department. This was when he improved the sales and back office departments significantly. In May 1999, he was transferred to the head office in Pune as deputy manager, looking after the sales promotion activities.

In May 2001, his responsibilities grew as he was assigned the role of circulation manager for the Pune region - an area where Sakal has maximum circulation.

In January 2003, Jadhav was transferred to Kolhapur as unit manager. Soon after, in June 2005, he was given the additional responsibility of handling Gomantak, the then newly acquired publication in Goa.

Jadhav soon became a member of Sakal's core team which launched the Aurangabad, Solapur, Satara and Goa editions of the paper. He was promoted as chief operating officer, Sakal Group of Publications in January 2006.