Kiran Mani joins OpenAI as Managing Director, APAC
Kiran Mani, Founder CEO of JioHotStar, will join OpenAI as the Managing Director for Asia Pacific region starting June 2026, confirmed industry sources.
At OpenAI, Mani will lead regional strategy and operations across the APAC region and report to Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s Chief Strategy Officer. While currently based in India, Mani will move to Singapore for the role.
Mani’s appointment comes at a time when OpenAI has been looking to expand its international presence. India ranks as its second largest market globally by weekly users, with Japan and Indonesia also in the top 10. The company reported significant enterprise adoption, with Japan as the top market outside the US for business users of ChatGPT, while 3 of the top 5 markets globally for Codex are in APAC, including India, as per sources.
Since April 2025, OpenAI has setup offices in Tokyo, Singapore, Australia, Korea, and India. As per sources, OpenAI is working with organisations across APAC to deploy AI tools across their workforces and integrate advanced models into products and services at scale.
Mani will continue to serve as the CEO at JioStar and lead the company’s digital platforms across sports and entertainment until June, as per an internal note to employees. According to his LinkedIn profile, Mani also led the merger of Viacom18 with Star India Lvt Ltd to launch the new platform JioHotstar.
Prior to JioStar, Mani held roles like the Managing Director for Android and Google Play in APAC, as well as earlier roles at Microsoft and IBM.
Mani is a national merit scholar from Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts and has a PGDBA from IBS Hyderabad.
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