MUMBAI: Zee Khana Khazana, the 24-hour food channel, has appointed Srikant Malladi as head of programming.

Formerly with Colosceum Media as non-fiction head, Malladi played a pivotal to make MasterChef India one of the most popular shows in the Indian TV industry.

Zee Khana Khazana business head Amit Nair believes that the channel has been growing at an incredible momentum and it is time to take it to the next level. “We are honored to appoint Srikant Malladi as the head of programming for our channel. Srikant comes with a lot of valuable experience across the entertainment and media platform and we are happy to have him on-board. We are confident that he will help us take the brand to greater heights,” he said.

Malladi comes with over 14 years of diverse media experience - web journalism, films (Bollywood and Hollywood) and television. In the last eight years he has focused and specialised in large format, prime time, non - fiction shows for a variety of Indian broadcasters.

Malladi joined Miditech India in 2006 as associate creative director (non-fiction) for shows like Lead India (Star One), K for Kishore (Sony) and Acting Ki Funshala (Sab TV). Post that he joined Colosceum Media in 2007 as supervising producer and moved up the ladder to become head of development and eventually got appointed as the head of entertainment (non-fiction). In his seven year stint at Coloseum Media, he was part of  several mainstream non fictional shows like Covershot 2: Mission North East, Roadies X1, Jaanbaaz, MasterChef Junior, MasterChef India and MasterChef Season 4.