Punit Goenka

Some Lesser Known Facts About Punit Goenka

• Punit is one of the Board of Directors of the Indian Broadcasting & Digital Foundation

• He did his schooling in different cities including Hisar, Delhi, and Mumbai.

• His younger brother, Amit Goenka, works at Zee Entertainment Enterprises as the President of Digital Businesses & Platforms.

• Punit dated Shreyasi Goenka for some time before marrying her. In an interview, he revealed that he broke up with her twice before their marriage.

• Occasionally, he drinks alcohol.

  

• He loves skiing and called it a stressbuster in an interview.

• Variety named him in their Variety500’s Influential Leaders List in 2018.

• He avoids watching the shows of his Indian competitors to avoid getting confused.

• Punit has claimed that he wanted to be a part of his family’s business from his childhood.

• Punit began his career in 1993 in Essel Group as a trainee. For his first task, he sold amusement park packages to schools in Virar, Mumbai.

• Punit Goenka took the role of an assistant at Essel Packaging before working as an executive assistant to his father, Subhash Chandra. Later, he joined the Zee Music Records.

• In December 1997, he worked at ASC Enterprises Limited (ASCEL) as the Vice President of Coordination and Operations.

• On 1 February 2002, he became the Group President & CEO of ASCEL Group of Companies and launched Dish TV in Delhi with Jawahar Goel, his uncle.

• He then went on to serve as the business head of Zee Sports before becoming a director of ZEE Digital Convergence Limited.

• On 1 January 2005, he became the business head of ZEE Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL).

  

• He served as the Director of the Adhikaar Foundation in 2007.

• He became the CEO of ZEEL and the Director of ETC Networks Limited in 2008. He became the director of Zee Turner Limited on 24 July 2008.

• He was made the Managing Director (MD) of ZEEL on 1 January 2010.

• He became the director and founder of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) on 9 July 2010.

• He became the director of Prozone Intu Properties Ltd. on 20 April 2012.

• Digital Studio featured him in their list of ‘DS Hot 100’ List in the Broadcasters section in 2014.

• In 2014, he received the ‘IMPACT Person of the Year’ Award from the former Governor of Maharashtra, Chennamaneni Vidyasagar Rao.

• He was elected as the president of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (now known as the Indian Broadcasting & Digital Foundation) in 2016.

• Business Today put him on their list of India’s top 100 CEOs in 2016.

• He became the first Indian to receive MIPTV’s Medailles d’Honneur with his brother Amit in 2016.

  

• His father, Subhash Chandra, is the chairman of Essel Group, a media tycoon and the founder of Zee TV. He has also served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 2016 to 2022.

• In 2017, Punit stopped smoking tobacco cigarettes but smokes electronic cigarettes from IQOS.

• He was the President of The India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) from 2018 to 2020.

  

• He became the chairman of BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) India in January 2019.

• In 2019, Punit’s uncle, Jawahar Lal Goel, became the Zee Media Network’s Editor-in-Chief.

• On 1 January 2020, he was reappointed for a 5-year term as an MD and CEO of ZEEL.

• He lunched with Manjiri Sonar, his one millionth Twitter follower, and her family in Mumbai in 2017.

  

• As part of his Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) drive against COVID-19, he donated 46 ambulances and 50 High Flow Heated Respiratory Humidifiers to the BMC on 14 June 2020.