2007 Pinnacle Awardee
Senior Vice President & General Manager, MTV World
Nusrat Durrani is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of MTV World, a divi-
sion of MTV created to launch new MTV-branded channels that serve emerging audiences in the US.
At MTV, Mr. Durrani was a key player on the team that launched mtv.com and hasworked
in various senior positions ever since, .As the Director of Business Development and
Operations, and later,Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, he was at the forefront of the Digital Media Revolution the first time around. He negotiated and managed some of the biggest deals cut by MTV at the time, bringing in over $50 million in revenue and creating a template for new media/old media deal-making. He also laid the foundation for e-commerce on MTV,VHI, CMT, and Comedy Central, now a multimillion dollar operation.
The one thing that bothered Mr. Durrani at MTV was the absence of programming specifi-
cally aimed at smaller, emerging audiences in the US, like the 13 million Asian Americans, who are the most affluent, educated and technology savvy group in the country. So in 2003, he worked with the business development team and started researching feasibility. He was not surprised to find that young people born to immigrant parents felt ignored by the media and were hungry for channels that reflected their bicultural identity. Mr. Durrani and his team worked the phones and crunched numbers at night to prepare a business plan for MTV to launch 4 new channels in the US aimed at bicultural young people.The project was green lit in 2004 and Mr. Durrani was announced as General Manager and SVP for a new division of the company called MTV World.
MTV Desi, MTV Chi and MTV K, aimed respectively at young South Asian, Chinese and
Korean audiences, were launched by Mr. Durrani and his team in the past two years.This historic project is a first of its kind in the US, and has been widely acclaimed with lead sto-
ries in the New York Times,Time Magazine, Business Week, and other leading outlets. He is currently engaged in expanding the presence of these brands on broadband and working on a bigger, global pop culture initiative.
Mr. Durrani remains a man with many involvements. He has been Chairman of the MTV Networks Diversity Council, and a mentor to a new generation of dreamers at the com-
pany. Prior to his 10-year stint at MTV, he worked for UPTRON, a leading electronics company in New Delhi after earning his MBA from The University of Lucknow, India. In 1990, he moved to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where he led the Marketing function for Honda Motor Cars, helping it become the second largest auto brand.
Mr. Durrani is also a video director, photographer, writer, and an evangelist of Asian pop
culture. He is married to Afshan, a fashion designer, and they have one daughter.