The Board of Directors

Siddhartha Basu (Chairman & Managing Director)

Born in Calcutta on December 28, 1954, Siddhartha grew up in Bombay, Delhi and Madras. He has schooled in Besant Montessori, Cathedral and John Connon Boys School, Bombay; Frank Anthony Public School, Delhi, and Kendriya Vidyalaya, IIT, Madras.

He graduated in English Literature from St Stephen's College, Delhi and earned a Masters degree from the Arts Faculty of Delhi University, as a boarder at Hindu College.

He was one of the founding members of Theatre Action Group, a pioneer theatre group in Delhi, under the artistic direction of Barry John.

He has announced, read and produced programmes for All India Radio's National Features, General Overseas Service, and Yuva Vani.

He has compered and been Master of Ceremonies for numerous events, including the Filmfare Awards Ceremony in 1995.

He has directed and produced documentaries and television programmes since 1977. Since 1985, starting with Quiz Time, he has conducted and hosted a number of quiz shows on television and otherwise.

In 1989 along with his wife Anita, he set up Synergy, a television production company, which allied with Reliance Mediaworks in 2007, and is now part of the BIG Reliance Entertainment group.

Anita Kaul Basu (Director)

Anita Kaul Basu, Director, Big Synergy, was born in Srinagar, Kashmir and schooled in England. She came back to India in 1975 to do her BA (Hons) in English Literature from Miranda House, Delhi University. She did her post graduation at the Indian Institute of Mass Communications, Delhi and joined the news magazine, India Today, where she worked for 5 years on the editorial staff. In 1989, along with husband Siddhartha she set up Synergy, a television production company.

She has worked on Synergy projects in several capacities – Project Coordinator, Executive Producer and Producer – on a host of shows.

Anita has also styled and image engineered several television personalities including Maneka Gandhi for Maneka's Ark and Divya Seth for several game and talk shows. She has also project managed the Mastermind India book publications, Hindi and English quiz columns for various Indian newspapers and multimedia live quiz shows across the country.

Karun Prabhakaran (Director)

Born in Delhi, Karun Prabhakar, the Operations Director of Big Synergy, started working with Siddhartha and Anita in 1986 after completing his B.Com (Hons) from Bhagat Singh College, Delhi University. He started out as a Production Assistant on Alpha Plus, an all-round ability game show, telecast on Doordarshan in 1987.

Since then he has headed the production and operations of all Synergy shows and projects, starting from Quiz Time in 1988.

Transferred to Mumbai in 2000, he set up the entire production base for the company.

Karun has also worked as an Executive Producer from Synergy in handling the entire production operations for the internationally famed Asian Music Awards Channel [V] which was handled by a top UK based event company AW for two consecutive years; 1997 & 1998 where artists such as Spice Girls, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Sting, etc performed. The shows were a technical combination of 13 multi-camera set-ups, on-line graphic feeds and an on-line multimedia feeder system with an Indian crew, all put together by Big Synergy. Karun also worked as the location manager for the Delhi leg of Mani Ratnam's, Shahrukh Khan and Manisha Koirala starrer "Dil Se".

Apart from TV shows and large events and feature film, Karun has produced a host of corporate films, TV commercials and designed productions for other companies as well.

His expertise lies in planning, infrastructural frame working and setting up the backbone required to support large multi-camera shows while designing organizational structures and finance cash flow plans for each project.

OTHER DIRECTORS ON THE BOARD

Anil Arjun Krishna
CEO, Reliance MediaWorks Ltd.

Venkat Devrajan
CFO, Reliance MediaWorks Ltd.

Shibasish Sarkar
CFO, Reliance Entertainment