Firstlight Media names India and MENA sales chief

Cloud TV technology specialist Firstlight Media has named Navdeep Singh Aswal as head of sales, India and MENA.

Navdeep Aswal

Aswal will be charged with building on Firstlight Media’s initial successes in the Indian market. The aha entertainment has tapped Firstlight’s cloud-native platform for the launch of the aha 2.0 Telugu language service launch in the fourth quarter of 2021 and a new Tamil language service that began serving customers in the first quarter of 2022, using the same back end.

Most recently Aswal had been director of sales, and business development – APAC for Accedo.tv, working closely with Tata Sky, Discovery Plus, Airtel, SonyLiv and other service providers. Previously he had led acquisition and partnerships for Digivive Services’ NexGTv, one of India’s first OTT services.

“aha’s original infrastructure couldn’t provide the scale they needed, so they turned to our cloud-native platform to achieve rapid time to launch in multiple markets and languages. As aha’s success continues to generate increased interest in the power of the cloud, Navdeep  will work closely with prospective customers to create collaborative, innovative, winning solutions that leverage Firstlight Media’s revolutionary architecture,” said Chris Drake, SVP, global head of revenue for Firstlight Media.

“OTT’s need to go all-in on the cloud to create truly differentiated video experiences is compounded in India by the need for language customisation, UX alignment, on-boarding, multiple digital payment systems, and other features to address the country’s diversity of cultures, content and languages. The Firstlight Media platform’s scalability, agility, extensibility, and unequaled performance already are powering fresh new services like aha 2.0 – a truly global platform which fully understands the regional complexity of the Indian market and consumers,” said Aswal.