Digital-first media, gaming and esports are the youngest, fastest-growing and most monetisation-experimental corner of the industry — and the leadership market is being built almost as fast as the businesses themselves.
This is the most dynamic segment of Indian media: digital-first publishers and creator businesses, real-money and casual gaming companies, and an esports ecosystem that has gone from niche to mainstream in a few years. The businesses are young, often venture-backed, and growing faster than their leadership benches can keep up.
Monetisation is the central preoccupation. Digital media has audiences but fragile economics; gaming has invented some of the most effective monetisation models in the industry, but operates under genuine regulatory uncertainty. The leaders in demand are those who have built durable revenue, not just reach.
Gaming, in particular, is a live-operations business — closer to consumer technology than to traditional media. Real-money formats sit at the intersection of product, payments and a shifting regulatory and tax environment that can reshape a business overnight. Leadership here demands commercial nerve and regulatory literacy in equal measure.
Our work covers digital publishers, gaming studios and platforms, and creator and esports businesses at chief-executive level and across the support functions — finance, technology, legal, governance and people — frequently for founder-led companies professionalising their leadership, and for investors backing the next phase of scale.
Product and growth leadership matters more here than anywhere else in media. These are technology businesses that happen to make content; the leaders who win think in funnels, cohorts and live operations as naturally as in audiences.
Regulatory and tax change is now a board-level risk in gaming, not a back-office concern. Leaders who can build a business while navigating a moving regulatory line — and who carry credibility with regulators — are scarce and increasingly decisive.
The creator economy has professionalised. What began as individual talent is now a set of media businesses with real revenue and real leadership needs. The executives who can institutionalise creator-led businesses without killing what made them work are a genuinely new profile.
Networks and broadcasters, through the shift from linear to connected viewing.
Open →Agencies, ad-tech and the businesses that sit between brands and audiences.
Open →Labels, live entertainment and the business of monetising fandom.
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