Gaana.com's founding member Avinash Mudaliar quits; Pawan Agarwal appointed new head

Avinash Mudaliar, head and also part of the founding team of Gaana.com, the music streaming service from the stable of Times Internet Ltd (the digital arm of the Times of India group), has left the company. He had joined the company as VP, creative, and content head in 2008. Prior to that, he was working as the editor in chief of In.com at Web18.

Post his exit, TIL has appointed Pawan Agarwal as the business head of Gaana.com. Agarwal comes with over 12 years of experience and prior to joining Gaana, he was the co-founder and chief operating officer (COO) at Sunstone Business School. An IIT Kanpur alumnus, he has also worked at companies like Lime Labs India, GlobalLogic, Xthetic Systems, and Amsoft Systems. At TIL, he will focus on the next phase of growth for Gaana.

The company has also beefed up its management team with a number of other senior level appointments. While Pratik Mazumder has joined as vice president, marketing, TIL; and Swapnil Shrivastav joins as a VP, ad tech, TIL; Miten Sampat has joined as business head, TimesCity.com.

Mazumder comes with 19 years of experience, and was the chief marketing officer at Yatra Online, prior to joining TIL. He has also worked at companies like Bharti, Ogilvy One Worldwide, Enterprise Nexus Direct, Bates Clarion Advertising, and Direct Response. He holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Mass Communication- marketing and communication from Clarion College of Communication (US).

Prior to Times Internet, Shrivastav was the founder and MD of Vriti, a smart online education platform and digital marketplace for publishers and students. He has also worked at companies like Tribal Fusion, SeekNet Technologies (was also the founder), and Motorola (acquired by Google). He holds a B.Tech degree in chemical engineering from IIT Bombay and a MS degree in computer science from Illinois Institute of Technology (US).

Sampat was earlier the VP of product strategy at Quova / Neustar, enabling some of the largest web companies understand 'where' their users come from. Before Quova, he was the chief architect and CTO at Feeva Technology and has also worked at Reliance Communications earlier. He holds a BS and MS degree in computer science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (US).

Speaking on the appointments, Satyan Gajwani, CEO, TIL, said, "Our new joiners represent the new values of TIL that is proven execution skills with entrepreneurial backgrounds. Each of our new joinees has come from an entrepreneurial environment with expertise and exposure in their domains. They have already made great contributions and we are excited for what's to come."

Early this year, Gaana.com finally went mobile with the launch of its apps for all platforms including Android, iOS, BlackBerry and J2ME devices. Post that, the company rolled out subscription-based premium service Gaana+ for iOS and also upgraded to version 2.0 with new features.