Mumbai: ACKO Tech on Thursday said it has appointed veteran journalist and anchor Siddharth Vinayak Patankar as its Editor-in-Chief and Chief Content Officer.
ACKO Tech aims to create a loyal audience that aligns with its brand values by developing high-quality, honest and entertaining content that keeps them engaged across platforms. The company believes that this approach will foster greater audience trust and affinity.
Siddharth, known for his work in auto journalism, brings 25 years of experience in curating content across various media platforms, including his role at NDTV for almost two decades. Siddharth started his career with NDTV in 1999 & donned many hats – Senior primetime news anchor, financial correspondent, producer, and Chief Editor-Auto. He had, in his years at NDTV, conceived all the automobile-based content for the NDTV network – including the annual carandbike Awards, and the Auto Prime band of programming which was launched in 2014. He was one of the key drivers behind – carandbike.com – the country’s 2nd largest auto portal. Siddharth is the first Asian journalist to have been appointed as Executive Director on the steering committee of the prestigious World Car Awards. In 2021 he was elevated to Vice Chairman of the global awards programme.
As Chief Content Officer, Siddharth will lead ACKO Tech’s newly created content division and create an end-to-end content platform for the wider audience. He will be responsible for the overall content strategy to build brand love to connect with the audience through engaging and educative content. The new content division’s first play will be in the automobile and technology spaces, where Siddharth will also be Editor-in-Chief.
Speaking on his appointment, Siddharth said, “The media landscape today offers a wide variety of content to audiences, but it is also cluttered, and can be motivated, or inaccurate, lacking credibility in many ways. Audiences need to have the choice to be able to select quality, authenticity, and accuracy, every time; while still not feeling short-changed on entertainment, or access to the content. Media also has the responsibility to offer credible news, information, and help bring awareness on key issues. With ACKO Tech’s new content division, we aim to offer the consumer that choice. One that respects her/their time, talks with them and not to them, and also entertains, excites, and engages them.”
“ACKO has the culture and ethos that would be ideal to incubate such a division. The company’s values and its people resonated with me, and helped me make the difficult choice to move away from a brand I had created and nurtured for several years. ACKO’s trust in me and the belief in our audiences gave me the confidence to join this vibrant tech player,” he added.
“We are thrilled to have Siddharth join our team. His extensive background in crafting strategic content platforms, in-depth understanding of the auto industry, and comprehension of consumer behavior and expectations make him a valuable asset to our team. With Siddharth’s leadership, we are confident in our ability to develop a robust content strategy that will enable us to create engaging and educational content across various platforms and formats,” said Varun Dua, Founder of ACKO.
