With over 28 years of experience across the media and entertainment industry, Shibasish has been involved with more than 500 films in his career as a distributor, producer & studio head. Additionally Shibasish has helmed teams that produced more than 90 TV shows, and over 10 OTT series.
Shibasish was previously the Group CEO of Reliance Entertainment, one of India’s leading production houses and a subsidiary of the Reliance Group, before becoming Chairman and CEO of IMAQ.
For this SPAC initiative Shibasish has gained support from the who’s who of the Indian entertainment Industry. These include top directors and actors of India’s film industry including Rohit Shetty (Director, Producer), Imtiaz Ali (Director, Producer & Writer), Neeraj Pandy (Director, Producer & Writer), Luv Ranjan (Director, Producer & Writer), Mani Ratnam (Director, Producer), Megastar Ajay Devgn (Actor, Director, Producer) and Vidyut Jammwal (Actor, Producer).
Other supporters of the venture include producers and media conglomerates such as Bhushan Kumar of film and music studio T-Series, the Mumbai Movie Studio, Supriya Yarlagadda of Annapurna Studios, B.V.S.N. Prasad’s Sri Venkateswara Cine Chitra, S. Shashikant’s Y Not Studios, Deepa Tracy’s Storiculture, Vishwa Prasad of People Media and Syed Taher Ali’s Taher Cine Tekniq.
IMAQ, a SPAC listed on the NASDQ, will focus its investment effort broadly across the media, entertainment and related technology markets, with a focus on the India opportunity.
India the fastest growing OTT market in the world is being viewed upon seriously by On Demand platforms as a must have proposition for their growth strategy. India is a huge multi-linguistic market with many local languages having addressable audiences over 50mn each. IMAC sees this opportunity to stich together M&A deals in segments such as films, TV & digital content, gaming, over-the-top distribution, online social media, online commerce, events, celebrity and talent management, and app-based applications in areas like sports and leisure.
Shibasish is a Chartered Accountant, Cost Accountant, Company Secretary and MBA with specialization in marketing. His past employment includes managerial positions at Viacom 18, UTV Disney & Godrej Sara Lee.
He has ever growing following on twitter where he posts his views on the entertainment business @Shibasishsarkar