MUMBAI: Zee News Ltd. (ZNL), the demerged company of Zee Telefilms which houses the news and regional channels, is targeting 25 January as the launch date of its Marathi news channel.

Harish Doraiswamy, who was earlier looking after the travel business of Oberoi and head of business development in IMG, has joined ZNL as its chief executive officer. Doraiswamy was also working with Adidas India as chief operating officer.

Laxmi N Goel will be the managing director of ZNL. He has relinquished his executive position as whole-time director of ZNL He will continue to be the director of ZNL in his non-executive capacity.

"We are launching the Marathi news channel on 25 January," Goel tells Indiantelevision.com. He also confirmed that Doraiswamy has joined ZNL as CEO.

Indiantelevision.com had earlier reported that Zee was planning to launch a Marathi news channel, 24 Tas (24 hours). The projected investment for this venture would be Rs 1 billion over a three-year, Goel had said.

The induction of a CEO comes in the wake of the demerger of Zee's news and regional channels business into ZNL. Zee had earlier announced that ZNL would get listed on the bourses in January.

ZNL plans to launch a slew of channels including a Tamil and a Malayalam channel to complete its presence in the southern language states. "We will be launching the Marathi news channel this fiscal. Any other launches will happen only in the next financial year," says Doraiswamy.