New Delhi: Google-owned YouTube has appointed Gunjan Soni as its new Country Managing Director for India, marking a key leadership change in one of its most important global markets. She succeeds Ishan Chatterjee, who left the company in 2024 to join JioCinema as Chief Revenue Officer. The announcement was made by Gautam Anand, Vice President and Managing Director for YouTube APAC, who described India as a "vibrant and crucial market brimming with creativity and opportunity" and praised Soni's leadership and expertise.

Gunjan Soni brings over two decades of experience across e-commerce, media, marketing, and business strategy. Most recently, she served as Group CEO at Zalora, where she introduced new business models and enhanced customer experience through personalization and loyalty initiatives. Her previous roles include executive leadership at Flipkart’s Myntra and Jabong, where she led fashion retail innovation, and at Star India, where she played a pivotal role in launching the streaming platform Hotstar. A former McKinsey partner and current board member of Fortune 500 firm CBRE Group, Soni is seen as a forward-looking leader well-versed in the creator economy and digital media trends.

YouTube’s presence in India continues to grow rapidly. The platform is now used by four out of five online Indians. YouTube Shorts, its short-form video format, has surged in popularity with 96% of users aged 18 to 44 engaging with it and an average of 70 billion daily views globally. Connected TV consumption is also rising, with viewers spending over two-and-a-half hours daily watching YouTube on their TVs, and more than half of that time going to content longer than 21 minutes. The platform now hosts over 11,000 Indian channels with more than one million subscribers, reflecting a 50% year-on-year growth.

Under Soni’s leadership, YouTube is expected to deepen its investment in India’s creator economy and further explore monetization and AI-driven content tools. Innovations like Dream Screen for AI-generated Shorts backgrounds and the launch of YouTube Create, an editing app for mobile content production, point to a strategic push toward empowering creators and expanding user engagement. Soni has expressed her excitement at joining YouTube and her commitment to fostering innovation and helping Indian creators expand their reach globally.

BI Bureau