MUMBAI: B4U Group will now have a global chief executive officer, a position that was left vacant after the exit of Ravi Gupta for over a year.

B4U UK and Europe CEO Sunil Rohra has been given the additional responsiblity as the global head of B4U and, thus, will be directly overseeing the company's Indian operations.

B4U Television Network's India operations head Ravi Nair will be reporting to Rohra.

With appointment of a global CEO, the energy now would be focused on synergies between the Indian and UK operations, as well as the overall objective of capitalising on worldwide operations, say company sources.

Despite being Bollywood music and movie specialist channel, B4U saw mediocre response from Indian audience. Even the problems that the channel faced because of its distribution set up took a heavy toll on the channel share.

B4U was poised for a fresh start with a new team put up this May. The core team comprised associate vice president and sales head Samir Mazgaonkar, marketing and PR head Melissa Machado Bhalla and programming and production head, for both India and overseas beams, Khalid Sayed.

"The management of B4U in India was in a mess. Nobody had a clue how important was the Indian operations to the Group. Now we will at least have some clarity on what the strategy is for India," said a source.

Taking charge as the Global CEO Rohra commented, “It is a big responsibility and I am looking forward to meeting the challenges that lie ahead. I am confident that I will be able to fulfill the expectations of the shareholders and the Board.”

“It is my aim to make B4U Network synonymous with Bollywood, such that if anybody wants to know anything about Bollywood, then they’ll know that B4U Network needs to be on their agenda,” added Rohra.

Former CEO of Zee TV UK, Rohra took over the reins at B4U on 2 August 2004. His appointment came almost in tandem with B4U's senior vice-president business development Neeraj Arora defecting to rival Sony Entertainment Television Asia (SET Asia) as vice-president for international business.

Rohra had been with Zee TV in the UK for 10 years and had been the CEO of Zee UK for the last two and half years. Rohra is reported to have turned Zee into a very profitable company and established Zee as the market leader in the Asian market.