MUMBAI: UTV today announced the appointment of Shalini Rawla as vice president, marketing for their upcoming Kids channel launched by UTV's United Home Entertainment (UHE).

Former Contract Advertising vice president, account management, Rawla will lead the kid's channels marketing division and will be responsible for overseeing all marketing and brand building efforts for the channel.

With over a decade of rich operational expertise both in the brand building and advertising space, Rawla has previously worked with some of the top ad agencies in India - Lintas, Ambience and Contract. She has been closely involved in creating the communications package for several new brand launches like Cadbury Chocki, Cadbury Bytes, Cadbury Celebrations and Parx Readymade men's apparel, says a UTV release.

"I look forward to being part of the UTV team and leveraging my experience and working towards achieving the common goals set for the channel. The transition from advertising to marketing is an exhilarating new challenge. Advertising is more like grooming a kid to be presentable when he goes to school while marketing is like experiencing childbirth itself," says Rawla.

According to UTV COO new ventures Purnendu Bose, "We are pleased to have Shalini as part of the team at UTV. She strengthens the core team for the launch of our upcoming kid's channel with her in-depth understanding of research and rich marketing experience with some of the top FMCG and retail brands in the country ."

As for the yet to named channel targeting kids from age group 4-18, it is said to be the first channel to have localized content made for the Indian audience by an Indian company. The channel is slotted to go on-air between July to September 2004 and will have 100 per cent Hindi content