Leading A Wave Of Digital Change In India: Rohit Chadda

People often say that “Home is where the heart lies! In our quest to achieve greater heights in our professional journey, most of us tend to look towards the west. But there are few who take pride in looking back at their original roots.

Such is the story of Zee Digital’s CEO, Mr. Rohit Chadda. He has been a pioneer in establishing such a vivid business for Zee Digital in India. His journey makes us believe in our potential even more. His homecoming from the United Kingdom in 2011 marked the footsteps for all new prospects in India. At the age of just 38, he has achieved glorious victories.

“Opportunities don’t just appear. You create them!” Amidst these difficult times when the world is fighting against the pandemic, many traditional ways of doing things have evolved drastically; a unification of businesses clubbed with innovative content strategies is leading to a whole new transformation.

Rohit Chadda, through his analytical approach and true capabilities as a leader, is writing whole new pages of victories even during these uncertain times. Known to be a game-changer, he turns adversities into opportunities through his out-of-box business strategies and creative ideas.

He started as an investment banker in the UK, later turned to Entrepreneurship and then took a giant leap to be the CEO of digital publishing at India’s largest digital media house of The Zee group. With his dedication and hard work, Rohit Chadda successfully etched his name in Fortune’s 40 under 40 lists. 

Quitting his career as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch in the United Kingdom, Rohit returned to India in 2011 and co-founded an online food ordering platform called ‘Foodpanda’. Starting with no entrepreneurial experience, he proved to be the most innovative and strategic leader of the times. He helped ‘Foodpanda’ expand to more than 40 countries and becoming the number one online food ordering application. However, in 2015, Rohit Chadda stepped down from the position of Managing Director.

Post that, in 2016, Rohit Chadda sensed the arrival of the era of digitalization and launched an online payments solution platform called ‘PayLo’. PayLo became very successful due to demonetization in India in 2016 and was later taken over by Immortal Technologies.

Rohit Chadda always believed that rather than the idea of a start-up itself, the successful and timely execution of the idea is more important. He contended that if the start-up environment or working professionals are not improvising according to the trending needs of the people, then the start-up idea itself may not work no matter how innovative or creative it is. Gaining insight from his learning, he has constantly been moving up the success ladder. 

In 2019, he was handed over the baton to take up the roles and responsibilities of Zee Group as the CEO of Zee Digital. This leadership proves to be one of the best investments in contemporary times. He has been significantly improving all the statistics and numbers of the Zee group since 2019. Zee group, also known as the Essel group, is believed to be an Indian conglomerate holding corporation. It operates in various subsidiaries like Zee Media Corporation, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, Dish TV, Essel Propack, Zee learn and Siti networks. 

As the most valuable human capital of the Zee group, he has been instrumental in helping Zee digital expand its users from 60 million to 200 plus million in a period of just 14 months. In April 2021, it broke all records to earn 300 plus million monthly active users, declaring another milestone. In the Comscore ranking, Rohit Chadda helped bring Zee digital’s position from number nine to number two, making it the second-largest digital media group in India with the help of his team and focusing on enriching content in different regional languages teamed with data-driven approaches and strategies.

The largest contributions of growth could be seen on his flagship brands like India.com with 11 times growth, Zee News with 3.4 times of growth, DNA with 4.3 times of growth, BollywoodLife.com with 5.2 times of growth, and WION with 7.8 times of growth. The Google user ratings of WION and Zee news applications have grown to 4.9 to 4.7, respectively.

Rohit Chadda believes that the execution of the ideas with adaptability to change to new demands is the key to success for businesses these days as the technology is changing and improving with every second.

With foresightedness towards potential developments in the near future for his ventures and sensing the consumption of more OTT content in the lockdown periods of 2020, he successfully launched eight new Zee websites and three new languages for expanding the Zee digital to the group of 20 brands and 12 languages. He thrived towards making available entertainment, news, finance, healthcare, sports, and technology-related content on his platforms. He also helped in the expansion of Zee digital to 170 countries.

Zee digital has also launched various new emerging vernacular digital platforms like Zee Madhya Pradesh Chhattisgarh, Zee Hindustan, Zee Rajasthan, Zee Bihar Jharkhand, Zee Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand, Zee Punjab Haryana Himachal, Zee Odisha, and Zee salaam. Recently, they added the largest progressive web app for 13 national and regional language brands to their portfolio, providing all the new and updated consumer experience on the mobile web. 

With his achievements, Rohit Chadda has changed the working criteria of businesses by new out-of-the-box business strategies, creative ideas, forward-thinking, and smart execution, setting the trend for the leaders of tomorrow. Homecoming led to new chapters of success for Chadda.