Nitin Keni

Nittin Keni is perhaps one of the few pioneering Film and Television professionals in India who has made a consistent, positive and deep impact on the field and business of Cinema and Television. He has been active in the field for over 35 years, starting with NFDC and then with ZEE - India's first private TV Network of which he was co-founder and Chief. He has worked closely with India's leading makers and artistes in Art & Regional Cinema, Bollywood and Television while producing movies and TV shows. Many of his films and shows have received national and international awards and recognition. He launched India's leading satellite TV Network with ZEE TV(1992), ZEE CINEMA(1995) ZEE STUDIOS(2012), made pioneering contribution in establishing private Television in India by working in close association with the visionary promoter Subhash Chandra, former Chairman of the ZEE Group. Zee Cinema a joint venture between Subhash Chandra and Rupert Murdoch was the country's first, only movies as well as first pay TV channel of which he was the first CEO. In 2011 he was appointed Group Chief Content Officer for three companies, overseeing content across three verticals i.e. 15 entertainment & movie channels in seven languages, 6 news & business channels and an English newspaper publication DNA, before he started a film & TV production house, Essel Vision Productions, whose film business was renamed as Zee Studios. He produced and distributed, the all-white, first 100 crore mainstream film of India -Gadar, in 2001 before the multiplex era. In a short span of only four years between 2012 to 2016 he single handedly changed the fortunes of the declining Marathi film industry that is now being called the golden period of Marathi Cinema with record number of films creating extraordinary box office success, with the crowning first 100 crore Marathi film Sairaat. Thus with Gadar, Sairaat, Rustom and Lunch Box, he has four films in the 100 crore club out of over a dozen mainstream films, produced and co-produced. He has distributed over 25 films, many in the overseas. Produced a large number of Telefilms, TV Serials, Reality Shows, Film and TV awards. In 2019, he launched an OTT platform Filmidesh, in association with the Valuable Group, for distributing regional cinemas catering to Indian diaspora in the overseas. Nittin is a qualified Engineer (B.E.) from VJTI, University of Bombay with post graduation in Management from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) - Calcutta. He trained himself in Cinema through short courses at FTII and by assisting renowned film director late Shri Basu Bhattacharya in his film Grahapravesh. He has been impressionably exposed to the best of World cinema and International markets, having regularly presented Indian Cinema at various International Film Festivals at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Rio, Tashkent, Cairo, Milan and others where he marketed films of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Guru Dutt, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Tapan Sinha, Shyam Benegal, Aravindan, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Mira Nair, Girish Karnad, Shaji Karun, Ketan Mehta, Sudhir Mishra, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Jahnu Barua, Mani Kaul, Kumar Shahani, Govind Nihalani, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Kundan Shah, Nirad Mahapatra, Gautam Ghosh, Shekhar Kapur, Prakash Jha, Aparna Sen, Jabbar Patel, Sai Paranjape, Amol Palekar, Girish Kasaravalli and other film makers of the Indian Parallel Cinema.